How to Make Your Content Mobile-Friendly to Increase Traffic and Engagement

In the present scenario, the number of mobile phone users has surpassed the number of desktop users remarkably. Consequently, it has emerged as the need of the hour to optimize the content of your website for handheld devices to secure the maximum profits for your business. Also, not-so-well optimized websites create hurdles for you to drive more visitors to your website.

After the announcement of a mobile-friendly algorithm by Google in 2015, all the website owners started emphasizing on making their websites’ content mobile-friendly. As Google released this "mobilegeddon" update, thousands of websites were hit badly in terms of traffic volume. It was clearly stated by Google through this update that only mobile-friendly websites are going to secure their rankings in Google search results.

It all shows that making the content of your website mobile-friendly is a must-do thing to increase traffic and user engagement on your website. Not only will it assist you in driving more organic traffic but it will also enable you to keep the bounce rate of your website minimal. This post throws light on the effective ways of making your content mobile-friendly.

Let’s Know The Term "Mobile-friendly"

If you are not aware of this term then you should definitely run your eyeballs on this section. As this term signifies, mobile-friendly content simply means the content needs to be arranged in such a way so that it appears perfectly on desktops as well as mobile devices. While accessing a mobile-friendly website on smartphones and tablets, you experience that the content is easily readable and the links and navigation menu are easy to click.

There are many tools available using which you can test whether your website is mobile-friendly or not. Google-owned "mobile-friendly test tool" and tools like "mobile phone emulator" can be used to check the mobile-friendliness of a website. Such tools show how your website looks on different mobile devices. Also, the tool offered by Google also gives a grading to your website on the scale of mobile-friendliness.

What is Responsive Design?

While floating in the ocean of the internet, you must have confronted with the term "responsive design". Though generally we use it as the replica term of mobile-friendly but the technical aspects contradict this general belief.

Responsive design is one of the strategies that are being utilized while designing a mobile-friendly website. A website that incorporates responsive design is sure to fit the device it is being accessed on.

It is only the responsive design that drives a website to a win-win situation when it comes to creating mobile-friendly web pages. Here the ways we are going to discuss are based on the responsive design of a website.

1.Set A Proper Percentage for Perfect Width

The HTML elements in your website carry the width that is assigned to them. While browsing a web page on Mozilla Firefox, just right-click on any of the elements of the page and click on "Inspect Elements". A panel will appear on the screen.

Click on the element in the left window of the panel to see the corresponding CSS (style properties) values in the right window. The value will specify the width of the page. Let’s understand this with an image:

You can set the value in the form of pixels (a minute area of illumination on a display screen) or in a percentage. If you set the value to 50% for an element, then the browser you are using takes it a command to convert that element into 50% of the screen width (or the section in which it is placed).

Reducing the percentage of an element is a wise move as the web page is accessed on a smaller screen, the element shrinks automatically and fits on the half screen. It doesn’t affect the look and arrangement of the content.

On the other hand, if the width of an element is specified by the pixels, then the width doesn’t fit according to different screen sizes. It always creates a problem if the pixel width exceeds the screen size. In such a context, the user needs to scroll the mobile screen horizontally which is itself a pain and nobody is going to take that pain as so many alternatives are there.

2.How Media Queries Make A Site Responsive

Using media queries is a perfect way to make a site truly responsive in nature. You must have noticed while browsing the web pages on mobile that some pages reshape as per the screen size in addition to resizing. It all happens just because the use of media queries. Media query is tagged as "@media" in the beginning of the line. The maximum and minimum width both can be specified in the brackets. Let’s have a look at the basic structure of media query:

@media screen and (max-width: 1020px) {#container, #header, #content, }

In the above example, the max-width is mentioned as 1020px, which literally means if the screen width is up to 1020 pixels, the CSS codes within the media query should apply. It means if the screen size is under 1020px, then all the elements will automatically reshape according to the screen size, thereby making the page responsive.

Different Attributes of CSS Media Queries:

min-height

max-height

min-width

max-width

orientation=portrait

orientation=landscape

3. Avoid Annoying Pop-ups

Though pop-ups are aimed at attracting the attention of the users but an overdose may be harmful to the purpose, especially when the users are browsing through mobile devices. It is not necessary that that the pop-ups that look fine on the desktop will give the same look and feel over mobile phones. The hard to close pop-ups always annoy the users and destroy the UX of a website completely. The solutions to prevent such annoying pop-ups can be listed as below:

Keep the pop-ups on disabled mode: This is the perfect way to get rid of the problems occurred due to pop-ups. Though not all the pop-up tools can be disabled, but you can disable most of the pop-ups for mobile internet users.

Create simple pop-ups: Don’t complicate the things while creating a pop-up. The forms that appear via a pop-up should have as minimum fields as possible.

Pop-up should appear when a visitor clicks: The pop-up that hit the screen after a certain period should be avoided. There should be links on a page to open the pop-up.

If you are not able to modify your pop-up with the current tool then it’s time to upgrade your pop-up tools.

4. Eliminate the interruptions

To keep the high UX maintained, it is the fundamental to eliminate all the distractions. The last thing a mobile visitor wants is to witness the several elements while loading a page. Due to distractions, sometimes users get frustrated and leave the page immediately. The ways to remove distractions can be tabulated as following:

Remove the typical sidebar

Avoid complicated navigation menu

Post unique and concise content on your site

5.Create Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) to Take an Edge

More or less Accelerated Mobile Pages are the HTML pages but created following a specific format. Google works in collaboration with the prestigious brands for creating AMP and providing the support for the same. An AMP page is mobile-friendly, thus getting priority when the mobile internet users search for the certain queries.

Also, the Accelerated Mobile Pages load faster than any HTML page. Hence, Google strongly recommends the website owners to create AMP. It is clear now that an AMP on your website can drive extra traffic and move it among the top rankers in SERP.

Maintaining the two versions of your content comes as a challenge while creating the Accelerated Mobile Pages. This is not an uphill task for a WordPress site as WordPress offers a plugin for the same- you just need to enable the same.

The only confusion that strikes the mind is though Google supports AMP but there is no guarantee that such pages are adopted to a large extent. Go for an AMP if you are having enough time and resources; otherwise wait to observe its adoption rate first and then move forward.

Wrapping Up

Conclusion

Getting ahead of the curve is the only formula to get enough exposure on the web with the sufficient traffic. And to attain this, proper implementation of mobile-friendly elements is the key. The above-mentioned ways are really effective for optimizing the content for mobile. You can share your views and comments via the section given below.

Ritu Singh is a Seo specialist working at BetterGraph. She has shared valuable efforts in the arenas of local seo services, mobile Seo, Aso & online reputation management.