Optimizing your site for mobile | a must in 2017

In today's society, computers are losing their popularity in favor of mobile devices. Although the interface plays an important role in creating a site's mobile design, user experience has become very important, now that the number of people who are using the phone for online shopping and services has increased by 148% worldwide. It is expected that this number will double in the near future. Therefore, in order to keep up with your target audience and to be visible, any entrepreneur should consider optimizing their site for mobile. This way, your page can be accessed from any device at any time.

Here are some aspects to consider when you want to optimize your site for mobile:

1. Understand and correctly target your audience

Perform a thorough research to find out what your audience's interests are and see what they want to find on your site. Often, the behavior of buyers changes depending on the environment in which they are at the moment of the purchase. For example, when buyers are in the traditional environment, in physical stores, they tend to buy just the bare necessities, they are in a hurry and they are not interested to find out about any promotions or other benefits. When visiting an online store, users tend to spend a lot of time viewing products that they wouldn`t be interested in when shopping in a physical store.

You can also see which pages the mobile users visit most often. Use all of this information to optimize your site for mobile devices,in order to make it appealing for your target audience. Keep in mind that the user should easily access useful information such as hours of operation, address (if there are physical points), menu, terms and conditions, but also the click-to-call buttons, so they can contact you.

2. Create fluid layouts

The variety of mobile devices available at this time on the market is far too large to be able to optimize the site for each device individually. That's why you'll need to create a fluid layout that perfectly fits all. Mobile web pages will load slower than traditional web pages, so it's important to keep the number of pages to a minimum. Users will not have the patience to explore the entire site so, for a successful site optimization, it's important to make the page design as simple as possible. This way, visitors will be able to easily access all areas of interest of the website.

3. Hide unnecessary content

If your site has a lot of links in the bottom of the page or a crowded ad space, then it's good to delete this content from the mobile version. As I said, it is important to simplify the user`s navigation process. Try to select and keep only relevant content, choose a fluid format with well-defined headers, where you can easily click on everything you want (even on devices with small screens).

4. Improve the site`s loading speed

User experience is the most important factor to keep in mind when talking about optimizing your site for mobile. The loading speed of your site is a major criteria you need to focus on. When a site is slow, the user leaves the page to look elsewhere for the information, service, or product he needs. Therefore, be sure to remove the elements that can slow down the loading speed.

One thing that can help you a lot in this stage is the compression of large images. All marketers who have optimized their sites for mobile have recommended this method, because the loading speed has considerably improved after this process.

5. Avoid using Flash or Java

Apple products do not accept Flash, nor do they intend to do it soon. As iPhone represents about 30% of the smartphone market, a significant part of the target audience can`t access the content of your site if you use Flash. Also, many mobile phones don`t accept Java and, if they do, it can significantly slow down the loading speed of the website.

6. Don`t integrate pop-up windows

Navigating between multiple tabs and windows open in your browser is more difficult on your mobile phone and can affect the loading speed of your site. When talking about optimizing your site for mobile, you have to completely forget about integrating pop-ups.

7. Create interesting content

Along with all the technical procedures you need to implement, you should also consider creating quality content. This is one of the most important factors that can decide the success of your site among users. You must keep in mind the interests of your target audience and adjust the information on your page based on them.

8. Monitor the results

You should closely monitor the results to see if the optimization of the site for mobile meets the goals you have set. If you see bounce rates higher than before for a particular page, you may need to reconfigure the layout or the content of the site. Implements metrics for mobile users to track how customers interact with your site and see what you can fix.

The number of people who use mobile phones is continuously increasing, and this trend doesn't seem to be slowing down anytime soon. In 2018, the number of smartphone users will increase, thanks to the ease with which you can fulfill your daily activities using these devices. That's why all the brands that want to be relevant and all the entrepreneurs who want their business to be as visible as possible, have to keep up with the user and must optimize their sites for mobile or rely on SEO specialists who can do this correctly and efficiently.