In January 2011, people were accessing websites through mobile devices only 6% of the time. In December 2012, that number jumped to 23.14%, a 283% increase in just two years according to an article by Internet Retailer. With the ever-growing use of mobile devices, this number will continue to grow exponentially. Is your website ready for this shift?
Mobile is the fastest-growing market, and designing a device-friendly site is becoming crucial for your online success.
Here are some tips from our web developer, Allison Liles, on designing for mobile devices:
Have someone design the mobile site. It’s an obvious step, but you really do need to design another separate site just for mobile. It is a completely different animal in the online world, and a mobile site will be more user-friendly and accessible to the 23% that will be using it.
Take into consideration all the different devices. The site may need to be rendered to fit correctly on full tablets, smaller tablets and smartphones. However, the jump from desktop to mobile phone is the most drastic change.
The less clicks the better. It’s much easier for mobile users to scroll than load a new page.
Simplify the design. The less to load on the device, the better.
Take your site navigation into consideration. On a mobile-device, you need to have larger clickable areas to make switching between pages easy for the user.
Stack content vertically. Mobile users don’t want to have to scroll side-to-side and up-and-down.
