Things to consider while designing a Mobile Friendly website

With the emergence of high speed wireless network technologies and the increasing market penetration of mobile phones and tablets, the global advertising industry’s interest in using this medium as a means of marketing communication  is rising. Mobile marketing lets businesses get in front of customers on the devices they use the most.

The problems most companies are facing today in terms of mobile marketing are the lack of clear strategies that harmonize specific business needs and user interests. Most business websites are still designed with only a desktop or laptop computer in mind. When you view a typical business website on the browser of mobile device, it usually requires pinching, zooming and scrolling just to see what’s on the page. And interacting with such site via a touch-screen can be clumsy at best.

Internet access using mobile phones in United Kingdom reached 53% in 2013, this was more than double three years ago when it was 24% This growing number made companies look forward to use dedicated mobile gateway which can build interactive relationships by identifying consumers in terms of commercial behaviour, geographic location and social communication patterns.

While designing the mobile marketing strategy for the “The Candidate” I came across few things which should be considered while designing a company’s mobile friendly website.

1.       Responsive web design

A study from Google reveals that 74% people when they visited a mobile friendly website are more likely to return to that site in future. In order to improve the mobile web experience, Google also recommends creating smart-phone optimized websites. Additionally, Google prefers responsive web design because content that lives on one website and one URL is much easier for users to share, interact with, and link to than content that lives on a separate mobile site.  

2.       Single Column layout

A single-column structure tends to work best as it helps with managing limited space on the smaller screen, it also helps you easily scale between different device resolutions and flipping between portrait and landscape mode.

3.       Larger Chunkier buttons

When converting from a desktop to mobile site design, you have to revisit your “clickable” elements — links, buttons, menus, etc. — and make them “tappable.” While the desktop web lends itself well to links with small and precise active (clickable) areas, the mobile web requires larger, chunkier buttons that can be easily pressed with a thumb.

Make sure the text is also big enough to easily read on a mobile device. The screen size is much smaller than a PC or laptop, and people don’t want to have to hold the phone up to their nose just to read it.

      4.  Keep it Simple

A mobile website is most likely loading on a smartphone, which doesn’t have the same bandwidth as your computer at home. Adding extra images can take a while to download, significantly slowing down the load time of your page, and forcing your visitors to click the back button.

      5. Test your mobile friendly website

Make sure that the site you design will play nicely with the vast number of devices out there. iPhones, Androids, and yes, even BlackBerrys need to be tested with your new site, and don’t forget to test multiple browsers for each device.

     6. The F-Design

An eyetracking study shows 232 users looked at thousands of Web pages. This dominant reading pattern looks somewhat like an F and has the following three components:

·         Users first read in a horizontal movement, usually across the upper part of the content area. This initial element forms the F’s top bar.

·         Next, users move down the page a bit and then read across in a second horizontal movement that typically covers a shorter area than the previous movement. This additional element forms the F’s lower bar.

·         Finally, users scan the content’s left side in a vertical movement. Sometimes this is a fairly slow and systematic scan that appears as a solid stripe on an eyetracking heatmap. Other times users move faster, creating a spottier heatmap. This last element forms the F’s stem.

 Contact info and social media plug-ins of your website should follow this pattern so that visitors don’t have to struggle to contact you or share your page on social media.

 In February’13, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) announced at the annual Mobile World Congress that number of active cell-phones will exceed the total world population by the next year. So, the simple and irrefutable prophecy is this: Mobile will power our internet lives in the near future

Hopefully this article provided some insight as you embark on a new mobile site design project. Be sure to leave any other tips you find useful when designing for the mobile web in the comments below.