Designing for a Mobile Device

When hosting a website, it’s easy to forget about your mobile users. All-too-often, when setting up a site and worrying about clients, a site owner will simply throw up some graphics and content. However, to succeed, one needs to worry about visitors coming from their tablets and smartphones. With this in mind, you need to design a site that renders well on a mobile device. Here are five things designers should keep in mind when designing for a mobile device.

Easy access to important links: Think about this for a moment, when a visitor from a mobile device lands on your site, what are they looking for? Often, a visitor will want to find store hours, an address or a phone number. When they can’t encounter this quickly, they will grow frustrated and may take their business elsewhere. Obviously, when on a desktop computer, this is not a huge problem as a visitor can click around with ease. On the other hand, when on a site with a mobile device, one will struggle to find all the necessary links. For this reason, if you want to ensure your visitors find what they are looking for, you will want to place all the important links on every page.

Use simple and clean code: When creating and building a site, it’s fun to use Flash and other exciting and intense programs. While true, this is not the approach you want to take when you build a mobile site. No, with a smartphone, a visitor will not enjoy his or her experience when loading Flash or other programs. Instead, to please your visitors using mobile phones, you must use CSS. At the same time, don’t use too many forms or tables as they will not usually render properly on a smartphone. When doing this wisely, your visitors will enjoy the site and the pages will load without errors.

Minimal graphics: When using a mobile phone, a visitor will often not have a plan with unlimited data. When this happens, he or she will grow frustrated when large images and videos load. At the same time, some data plans don’t offer enough speed to load photos and videos quickly. Or this reason, when you designs a mobile site, remember that your visitors will appreciate pages that load quickly and without errors. Then, when you remove all the graphics, or resize them, your visitors will not quickly head to a competitor.

Test it for errors: Without a doubt, when you run a mobile site, you will want to test it for errors. While it’s easy to create a site that loads in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome, you will struggle with a mobile site. Remember, you will need to test your site on as many devices as possible. When doing so, you can spot any serious errors and shortcomings with your mobile site.

Minimal content on your pages: Finally, as mentioned, people landing on a mobile site will usually want information. This is true whether you run a restaurant or an e-commerce site. To provide an excellent experience, try not to ramble on. Instead, get straight to the point and offer your readers true value. Then, on your non-mobile site, you can put up your blog and offer articles on your product and service. Remember, if you get to the point, your readers will appreciate your mobile site.

With these five things to keep in mind, you can develop the perfect mobile site for your needs. Simply put, once you offer value and an enjoyable experience, your visitors will take notice.