When looking for ways to boost your online visibility through search engine optimization (SEO), one design element that you should pay particular attention to is the mobile-friendliness of the website. Among other things, a mobile-friendly site will adjust to all screen sizes so that it appears congruent across all devices and still maintains a high level of responsiveness. 

If you’ve ever visited a website that remained the same size or looked cluttered and unreadable when you looked at it on a device other than your computer, you probably know how frustrating the experience can be — and you might be able to understand how your potential customers might feel.  

Your website’s mobile-friendliness also plays a direct role in how high you are ranked in popular search engines, such as Google. This is because more people than ever are using their cellphones or tablets to access the internet, whether it’s to play their favorite mobile games, stream their go-to television dramas, and — crucially enough for you — look up products and services that are just like those offered by your business. The world has become more mobile, and your business website needs to adapt to this change. 

But how will you be able to tell if your website is mobile-friendly or not? Let’s get into the basics of mobile-friendliness and how to gauge whether your business website is actually appealing enough to your mobile customers.  

How does mobile friendliness affect your web presence? 

The specific algorithms that search engines use to rank their websites are not common knowledge. But it’s important for you to know that Google regularly posts updates on specific factors that affect ranking signals. In recent years, it has explicitly stated that mobile-friendliness will play a key role in how well a website ranks on its site. The more mobile-friendly a website is, the higher the chances it will be featured on the first page of the search engine results pages (SERPs) for a specific query. 

The underlying logic behind a ranking factor such as mobile-friendliness lies in user experience, or UX. Think of search engines as compendiums of information: they’re built to give the best possible answers for each question posed to them. So, for example, if a user is searching for web design services in Philippines companies, they should be able to find results for web design agencies in the Philippines and not be shown search results for art museums in Peru or supermarkets in Italy. 

Your company’s SEO efforts and your success at landing on the front pages of SERPs can be further enhanced by your website’s mobile-friendliness. It is no longer enough that your website is seen as the home base for thought leaders in its specific industry, and that you regularly post high-quality and grammatically correct content on it. In today’s highly competitive digital economy, your website must also be easily accessible to users on both computers and mobile devices. It should also be responsive across screens of all sizes for it to have a better chance of being crawled and ranked by search engines. 

How will I know whether my site is mobile-friendly or not? 

There are several ways for you to check if your site is mobile-friendly or not. Try these five things to get a basic idea of where your website can stand to improve in terms of mobile-friendliness: 

1. Access your site on your phone

The easiest way to see if your website is mobile-friendly or not is to access your website yourself on your preferred device. Make sure to log out of your website design software, such as WordPress, so that you can view the website as it would be seen by the public.

Does your website automatically adjust to the screen size? Are the buttons responsive to touch? Is the font size properly adjusted for a smaller screen? Take note of all these factors when looking at your website on your phone or tablet. 

2. Play around with your browser

Open your website on your desktop browser and then minimize the page to various sizes. Your website should be able to adjust accordingly, regardless of the size of the opened tab. 

3. Work with different browsers

Similar to the point above, try playing around with different browsers, from Chrome to Firefox, to see how your website looks on each one. A mobile-friendly website will always adjust to the opened tab and fit the screen, no matter its size on a different browser. 

4. Seek help from Google

Google itself offers a mobile-friendliness test, which allows you to see whether your website is responsive across screens of all sizes. However, this test is not entirely accurate or reliable and only gives a general idea of how mobile-friendly your website is. Get a brief assessment from Google’s tools and improve upon your mobile-friendliness further by discussing your initial findings with a professional web designer. 

5. Ask other people

The ultimate test for mobile-friendliness is to let other people use your business website on their phones or tablets and see how they respond to it. It may be difficult to look objectively at your own work, so having other people give feedback is a great way to determine possible areas of improvement that you may have missed. 

What can I do to make my website more mobile-friendly? 

It is important to remember that your website is usually your customers’ first point of contact with you and that you would want them to have a positive and unencumbered experience when they’re on your site. Overall, your website design elements — from typography to color combinations to buttons — should exude a professional look and feel while also being simple enough to navigate around.

You will be able to achieve good UX and favorable results on SERPs not only with excellent web content and crisp web design, but also mobile-friendliness across devices of various types. The best approach is to consult with experts like pro web designers who have the requisite skills and knowledge to help you implement more mobile-friendly web designs. Get an idea of just how mobile-friendly your website actually is, invest in improving on your mobile-friendliness, and see just how big a difference it will make on your bottom line.