Since the majority of users now use Google via a mobile device, it’s critical that your website not only be mobile-friendly, but adopt a “mobile-first” strategy to ensure your website appears at top of Google search rankings. This is especially important to local businesses, where even more people are looking for services on their phones. Google is now using the mobile-friendliness of a website as a ranking signal and demotes websites that aren’t optimized for phones and tablets.

The websites we design are not only mobile-friendly, but adopt a mobile-first strategy to help ensure you appear at the top of Google search results. Following are three steps to ensure your website provides a great user experience on mobile devices and ranks high in Google search results:

Responsive Website Design

Responsive web design is means your website will respond to the user’s behavior and environment, based on screen size, platform and orientation. So, as at the user switches from their laptop to iPad or phone, the website should automatically switch to accommodate for that device, ensuring a positive user experience. This eliminates the need for a different design and development phase for each new device on the market. Every website we design is responsive and mobile-friendly, ensuring your website reaches the widest possible audience.

Optimize for Speed

When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO) and user experience, website loading speed is everything. In fact, Google recently announced that page loading speed will be a ranking factor for mobile searches. We do what’s required to optimize your website for maximum page speed. This includes image optimization, which includes compressing photos and graphic for mobile screens. Also, installing an SSL certificate and moving the website to a secure HTTS protocol. This will note only secure your website, but will also improve loading speed.

Simplify Navigation And Interactions

Some parts of your website designs need to be specially formatted when creating a mobile-first website. For example, if your desktop website has a large navigation menu, displaying it as it is will take up half the space on a mobile screen. Instead, you can conveniently hide the navigation links behind a hamburger menu button. Also, the trend now is to have longer pages so users can easily swipe up and down, rather than have to click on small links to go to additional pages. This also includes keeping text and content brief and concise, since people won’t read a lot of text on a phone.

How Can We Help You?

Google’s new mobile-first strategy is a massive change in how websites will be ranked moving forward. As your audience uses phones more and more to find you, you need to make sure your website follows the requirements to ensure you connect with your customers where they live - which is on their phones. We can help you to design a website that is not only beautiful and reflective of your business, but also one that reaches your audience wherever they are.