Smartphone traffic now accounts for more than half of all web visits. The market is booming, so if your business isn’t ready for the mobile world, then it’s missing out. Poorly optimized websites appear misshapen, lose their formatting and can be glitchy.
#1 Use a responsive theme
Responsive themes are the most important part of designing a website with mobile traffic in mind. You’ll notice that most websites display entirely differently on a desktop than how they do on a mobile browser. This applies to everything from supermarkets to online casinos like Jackpotcity Casino Slots. Layout changes occur automatically because responsive themes know whether they’re being viewed on a desktop or mobile. They’ll adjust everything from formatting to layout, and the result is a seamless experience that’s stress free for you and visitors to the site. Making a “universal theme” is time-consuming and nearly impossible with the range of smartphones and tablets on offer, so opt for responsive to save time.
#2 Avoid big images and videos
These consume bandwidth. While that’s completely fine on a desktop, remember that mobile users might be burning through data as they browse. Only use images and video when they’re absolutely essential, rather than just for decoration. This has the added advantage of making websites load faster, as well as making it easier for a responsive theme to adjust. The same applies to plugins (especially anything related to JavaScript). Many web browsers have these disabled by default and they almost certainly won’t load correctly (if at all) on a smartphone.
#3 Use AMP markup
AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is a form of coding designed to strip webpages down to their bare essentials so that they display well on a mobile browser. Not only does this make for a vastly improved user experience, but there are definite search engine benefits to be had. Google recently integrated AMP into its results, which means that mobile sites optimized in this way will rank higher. Most web designers are well aware of the importance of good SEO but don’t know that AMP helps to improve your ranking in mobile searches. Content like carousels rather than vertical feeds are one of the defining features of AMP, but the overarching aim is to make websites load and display seamlessly.
#4 Get rid of flash
Flash used to be a common sight across the internet. It was used to give websites animated designs and, in some cases, build in-browser games. Those days are long gone, however, and Flash is nowadays considered somewhat of a relic. Some web designers still use it, even though it’s an absolute no-go for mobile optimization. No matter how impressive a website using Flash looks on a desktop, it invariably won’t translate well onto a mobile browser. Some smartphones won’t load Flash at all, so it’s time to remove this outdated medium from your website.
Flash remains great for games, but clean designs will always win in the race for mobile traffic.