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Mobile Friendly vs Mobile Optimized vs Responsive Design: What You Will Need To Know About The Mobile Version of Your Site

Making a website mobile prepared is Pretty high on the request list for businesses and organizations developing a new website. But, there are a flurry of conditions surrounding cellular. Mobile friendly, mobile optimized, and a newer term: responsive design. What's the difference between these? Why is it important?

In fall 2012 Peter Sondergaard,
Senior vice president at Gartner, a world-wide IT analysis and research firm, estimated that by 2014 there'll be more internet browsing from mobile devices than on conventional desktops or laptops. We've seen our own clients' website analytics for mobile users jump from an average of 5-8% in 2010 to 16-20% in 2011. 2012 is showing a similar increase. There's absolutely no doubt that mobile cannot be ignored.

With mobile devices ranging from
Handhelds to tablets, understanding how your site will display on the variety of formats is crucial. When terms like mobile friendly, cellular optimized, and responsive design appear in development discussions, you'll know the difference.

MOBILE FRIENDLY WEBSITE

Mobile friendly describes a Website That displays accurately between your desktop/laptop computer and a mobile device like a handheld phone (iPhone, Android, Blackberry) or tablets (iPad, Kindle, Galaxy, etc.). While it will appear smaller on a telephone and might not work flawlessly on a touchscreen tabletcomputer, a mobile friendly website will be perfectly functional. Many developers view mobile friendly as a"best practice" for all website developments.

Ensuring Your Site is mobile Friendly is crucial. As we discussed previously, the percentage of mobile users is rapidly increasing. What are the vital features of a mobile friendly site?

Text-based telephone numbers, physical addresses, or email Addresses that can trigger a call, directions, or email message from your mobile device

Slideshows or image rotators that operate without Flash support (Adobe Flash is not supported by Apple and some other mobile devices)

Small image sizes to allow for fast loading over Mobile connections--do not count on even a 3G connection

Here are some examples of mobile
friendly websites:

MOBILE OPTIMIZED WEBSITE

A mobile optimized website is a far more advanced website. Mobile optimized means that the website will reformat itself to get a list of handheld or tablet devices. Larger navigation buttons, reformatted content, and otherwise optimized images look when the user is on an iPhone or other apparatus.

Why reformat? Reformatting allows The site to easily engage a large mobile audience when key buying decisions come up. More and more customers are turning to their mobile devices right from the store. Having a website developed that enables the user to easily navigate and participate from the little displays of their handheld means reaching a decision quicker.

What are some good formatting Elements that go into a mobile optimized site?

Simplified navigation that is"thumb" friendly with Massive touchpoints, especially for critical contact info

Reduced images that don't interrupt the quest for Critical information such as product listings or commoditized articles

Avoid making users kind unless absolutely necessary

Give users the option to view the desktop version of
your site

Here are some mobile optimized Websites worth checking out of your handheld:

RESPONSIVE DESIGN WEBSITE

As website design continues to Evolve, a fantastic type of development has come into play. Responsive design is a way of developing a site that's totally flexible irrespective of device. Rather than detecting a specific browser type or device type, the site automatically orientates itself based on the screen size of the apparatus. A combination of reformatting and re-optimizing the website as a whole provide a practical flexibility beyond imagination.

Responsive design, while more
Expensive to develop, is the wisest development investment if you're managing a consumer or audience-base that is busy on mobile devices or need to make purchases on the go. Impulse purchases are obvious, but this is equally critical for product content such as blogs or news outlets.

WHAT ABOUT SMALL BUSINESS AND
MOBILE WEB?

Mobile surfing --from tablets to Smartphones--is growing at an unprecedented rate. The consumer's passion for immediate gratification of the informational needs requires effectively delivering your product (physical or intellectual) via the mobile web.

What about small business or a
non-profit organization? Is mobile friendly good enough? Should an organization discuss a mobile optimized version? Will investing in a responsive design site bring a measurable return?

Exceptional questions with answers only you can provide. Every situation will be different, but give significant idea of what percent of your site visitors are on mobile devices? Google Analytics will inform you. What does your current site look like? Pull out your smart phone and find out.

If your eyes just flickered over To your smartphone and you don't know the answer...that may already be your answer.

Mobile Optimization

Mobile optimization is the process of ensuring that people who Access your website from mobile devices have an experience optimized for the device.

What is Mobile Optimization?

Every year people spend more and more time on their mobile Tablets and devices, but many websites still aren't designed to account for different screen sizes and load times. Mobile optimization requires a look at website design, site structure, page rate, and more to make sure that you're not inadvertently turning away mobile visitors.

Mobile SEO Best Practices

If your site is already well optimized for search engines, there Are just a few additional things which you need to consider when optimizing for cellular devices and Google's move to mobile-first indexing.

Page speed

Due to hardware and connectivity issues, page rate is even More important for mobile users compared to desktop users. Beyond optimizing images, you'll want to minify code, leverage browser caching, and reduce redirects. More info on page speed is found on our SEO Best Practices for Page Speed page.

Don't Block CSS, JavaScript, or graphics

In the old days, some mobile devices could not support all of These elements, so webmasters of mobile sites blocked one or all three. However, for the most part that is no longer true, and the Smartphone GoogleBot would like to have the ability to see and categorize the identical content that users do. So don't hide it. These elements are also vital to helping Google understand whether you have a responsive site or a different mobile solution.

Site design for mobile

Mobile devices are simplifying and revolutionizing the ways
sites are designed. "Above the fold" no longer has meaning in a world where we scroll endlessly

Don't use Flash

The plugin may not be available in your user's phone, which Means they will miss out on all of the fun. If you want to create special effects, use HTML5 instead.

Don't use pop-ups either

It can be difficult and frustrating to attempt to close these on a mobile device. This might result in a high bounce rate.

Design For the fat finger

Touch screen navigation can lead to accidental clicks if your Buttons are too big, too little, or in the path of a finger that's trying to get the page to scroll.

Optimize titles and meta descriptions

Remember that you're working with less display space when a user Searches using a mobile device. To show off your very best work in SERPS, be as concise as possible (without sacrificing the quality of the data ) when creating names, URLs, and meta descriptions.

Use Schema.org structured data

Because of the limited screen area, a search result with rich Snippets is much more likely to stand out than on a desktop. Read more about Schema.org structured data.

Optimize for local search

If your business has a local element, remember to optimize your Mobile content for local search. This includes standardizing your name, address, and phone number and including your city and state name in your site's metadata. More information on local SEO are available here.

Mobile site configuration

Probably the most important decision you will make when setting up A site is deciding whether you want to use a responsive, dynamic serving, or different website configuration. Each has its benefits and drawbacks. Google prefers responsive layout but supports all three choices as long as you have set them up properly.

Responsive web design

Responsively-designed sites use CSS3 media queries to serve the Same content to mobile and desktop users using a fluid grid and a flexible design to automatically adapt to the size of a user's display.

Responsive designs utilize media queries to target the design based on screen width, orientation, and resolution. For example, you may use the following CSS to instruct browsers how to display content to get a screen that is 420 or fewer pixels wide:

Code Sample

@media display and (max-width: 420px)

.class

[styles for This course here]

And to link to another stylesheet instead, put the following HTML in between your tags:

Code Sample

="" type="text/css" media="screen and (max-device-width: 480px)" rel="stylesheet">

Responsive designs allow you to have a Number of these media Queries so that users on tiny mobile displays, larger-than-average mobile screens, and even tablets can all see a website that looks designed for their devices.

Use a Google's
Mobile Testing Tool to verify that your site is optimized for cellular.

Dynamic serving

If you do not have the resources for a complete site redesign or Want to display different content for mobile visitors than you do for desktop ones, one solution would be to use one URL to display unique sets of HTML and CSS based on which type of device your visitor is using (also called discovering user representatives ). This can be useful, for instance, if you're a restaurant who needs a mobile visitor (who may be drifting your neighborhood) to see a sampling of testimonials and a map to your location instead of your whole website.

Displaying different content based on the user agent is known as Dynamic serving and it is done using the Vary HTTP header, which looks like this:

Vary HTTP Header

GET /page-1 HTTP/1.1

Host: www.example.com

(. . .rest of HTTP request headers...)

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Content-Type: text/html

Vary: User-Agent

Content-Length: 5710

(... rest of HTTP response headers...)

Example in the Google Developers Blog.

Simply put, this means that the content displayed will vary Depending on the user agent requesting the page.

Dynamic serving is not the perfect compromise that it might look to be. For one, it relies on having an updated list of user agents, which means that each and every time a new mobile device comes to market that list has to be updated. And it's not uncommon for desktops and mobile devices to be wrongly served with the HTML for another device. Read more about common pitfalls.

Separate mobile URL

Another option is to create a second, parallel site for mobile users. This allows you to create completely custom content for mobile visitors. To avoid URL confusion, most parallel mobile sites use an"m" subdomain.

Parallel mobile sites can be as pristine as lively serving Sites at sending visitors to the right version, so make certain to make it easy for visitors who end up in the wrong location to click over to their favorite experience.

You will also want to make sure that your site redirects are all in place and as Lean as possible to reduce page speed. And to prevent duplicate content issues, you will have to set up rel="canonical".

SEO Basics: How to improve your mobile site

Here is the thing: your Website should be mobile-friendly. In fact, this could just be your number one priority. If you wish to improve your mobile search engine optimization , you have to improve the performance of your site, plus you have to make sure that it offers users an superb mobile experience. In this SEO basics article, you'll find a summary of what you should do to improve your mobile site.

When is a website mobile-friendly?

A Website is mobile-friendly when it:

loads properly on a mobile device like a
Smartphone or tablet,

loads lightning fast,

Presents content in a readable manner, without Users needing to pinch and zoom,

Offers ample room to navigate by touch,

Offers additional value for mobile users,

is instantly understandable for search engines.

Why is cellular SEO important?

Mobile SEO makes sure
Your mobile site gives the finest possible presentation of your content to a mobile device user. Since our world is increasingly mobile-oriented, it is now imperative that your website is mobile-friendly. If your site isn't, or not properly, available for mobile users, you are going to miss out on a good ranking in the search engines and thus miss income. Therefore, you should do everything in your power to make the mobile version of your site as good as possible. In actuality, it ought to be excellent!

Since the start of This year, Google uses the mobile version of the site to determine its rankings. If your site isn't up to scratch, or if you present less content on your mobile website, you'll have a difficult time getting a good ranking. If you do not have a decent cellular version of your site yet, you best make a fully functioning one, rather as a responsive design. Google has a excellent getting started guide to get you going.

How to Increase your mobile website

To improve your Mobile SEO, you need to focus on a couple of things:

Ensure Your Website is responsive

Improve your site speed

Do not block JavaScript, HTML and CSS code

Don't use interstitials or pop-ups

Don't use too many redirects

Choose the correct viewport

Verify mobile-friendliness

Tell Google about your Website

Responsive design

There are multiple Strategies to make your site available for mobile users. The most important one is responsive design, which is the tech Google advocates. With a responsive design, your website resides on a single URL, which makes it easier for Google to understand and index it.

If you use WordPress,
Chances are that your motif is already responsive and can adapt to all screens. Be sure to check how your site scales in Google Chrome's Developer Tools. If it doesn't scale correctly, you should speak with your web developer about fixing it -- or pick a different theme.

Improve your site speed

Among the most Important things you can do to improve the cellular SEO of your site is to enhance the loading speed of the site. Again and again, studies show that people leave websites that load slowly, often never to return again. Speed has been a ranking element for many years, and Google is increasingly focusing on fixing this frequent issue.

Optimize images

If there is one quick Win to increase your site speed, it's this: optimize your images. Do not load those 3000 x 2000 pixel HD pictures on your site. Scale them to the proper size and make them smaller using a tool such as ImageOptim or WordPress plugins such as WP Smush.

Minify code

Every request your Site has to make has an effect on site speed. You have to work on reducing these orders. 1 way of doing this is by minifying code. This means that your group and concatenate resources like JavaScript and CSS, and as a result, the browser has to load fewer files, resulting in a faster site. This sounds hard to implement, but a plugin such as WP Rocketcan take care of all your caching needs.

Browser caching

By using browser Caching, you are telling the browser which page elements that don't change frequently can be saved inside its cache. This way, the browser only has to download new and dynamic content whenever it visits again. Again, this is something a plugin such as WP Rocket can help you with. Or you could also do it yourself if you like.

Reduce redirects

A redirect leads A visitor from one requested page to another, because the requested page was moved or deleted. While this leads to a fantastic user experience if done well, the more redirects you use, the slower your site will be. Do not make endless redirects. Also, try not to keep links around that point to deleted articles that are redirected to new ones. Always make direct links.

Don't block resources like JavaScript, HTML and CSS

We have said it before, And we are going to keep saying it: Don't block resources like JavaScript, HTML and CSS. Doing so makes it harder for Google to get your website and that could result in bad rankings. Assess your Google Search Console to see if you're blocking tools.

Improve legibility

Make sure that your mobile site is perfectly readable on mobile devices. Use different devices to check if your typography is in order and, when necessary, make adjustments . Typography can make or break the user experience of your website.

Improve tap target sizes

People hate it when Their finger can't hit a button, link or menu item without fault. Sometimes designers have not given sufficient thought about the dimensions of the buttons. Mobile users get frustrated when navigation is hard or unnatural. Fix it.

Choose the correct viewport

The viewport Determines the width of this page for the device used to view it. By specifying a suitable viewport, you make sure that visitors with particular devices get the right version of your website. Fail to do this, and you may just show your desktop site to a small-screen smartphone user -- a significant no-no.

Don't use interstitials or pop-ups

Beginning this year, Google will penalize sites that use big pop-ups or interstitials to promote newsletters, sign-up forms or ads. These often get in the way of the user immediately accessing the content they asked. Do not use them, but if you must, be sure you abide by Google's rules.

Test your site and inform Google about it

Before you start Working on your cellular SEO, you should run a Mobile-Friendly Test on Google to determine where you should start. During your work, you should keep testing to see if you make progress. If your site is optimized, you want to tell Google about it so that it can be assessed and indexed. Use Search Console to remain on top of the performance of your site.

Investigate Google AMP

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is a new initiative by Google and others to get web pages to load super fast on mobile devices. By wrapping your content in particular HTML code, you can optimize the pages in ways that Google can use to give them special treatment. Pages are cached by Google and presented using a stripped down presentation to make sure it gets delivered at moderate speed.

AMP is still Relatively new, but growing quickly. Nearly every site can benefit from incorporating this technique. If you have a WordPress site, it's not tough to get started; simply put in the official plugin. This takes care of most of the installation. You may find more details about Google's guidelines.

Conclusion

Mobile is the future,
but that future is now. Do whatever you can to repair your mobile website and make it perfect, not just in Google's eyes, but, more importantly, your visitor. Mobile SEO isn't just about great content and a flawless technical demonstration, but more about creating a user experience to die for. Once you've achieved that, you're on your way to the top!

In 2016, the inevitable happened, and mobile overtook desktop as the primary device used to access websites. This did not come as a massive surprise because, as far back as 2015, Google reported that more searches were conducted on mobile than on any other device category.

In many businesses, this may be conservative and, At the agency I head up in the UK, Bowler Hat, our B2C clients are seeing around 85 percent of all website sessions conducted on mobile devices.

Suffice it to say, mobile has well and truly arrived. Yet, while responsive design has been around for some time now and is fairly well-established, nearly all sites tend to fall back on usability. That is, nearly all sites continue to be built for desktop and then dialed back for mobile. This form-fill that has been mildly annoying on desktop computer is an absolute pig on mobile. Even if it's responsive.

This is not good enough at the mobile-first world We're rushing toward in 2017.

In this article, I am going to look at the way you Can ensure you're truly optimizing for mobile users. We'll look at the essentials of responsive design and page rate, but we will also look beyond this at user experience tailored to mobile devices. We will then wrap this up with a mobile optimization checklist that you can use to identify optimization opportunities.

Our aim here is to go the extra space to Create fully mobile-focused sites; to delight our customers and drive conversions; to utilize mobile optimization to develop a tactical advantage over the competition. And, of course, Google wants to pleasure cellular users so we can improve engagement and search-engine ranking variables and also benefit from enhanced SEO. Better for users. Better for search engines. Win-win.

What Google wants

At this time of year, many SEOs are looking
Forward, and, referring to a SEO best practices article for 2017, Google's Gary Illyes complimented those who

Listed below are three key Stats I have lifted from Google's promotional materials that clearly illustrate the importance of cellular optimization:

Today, more people search on mobile phones than computers.

Individuals are five times more likely to Leave a site if it is not mobile-friendly.

More than half of mobile users will abandon a Website if it takes longer than three seconds to load.

Because more people search on mobile than on
Computers, mobile generates more page views. If your site is not mobile-friendly, users are less likely to stick around. And if your site is slow, they might not even wait for the page to load.

Add in the unreliability of mobile data networks Here and your site has to be a mean, lean mobile-friendly machine, or you may not even get a shot at that customer.

The mobile-first index

The complete nail in the coffin for a Desktop-first approach to websites and search is the mobile-first index. Adopting this philosophy makes sense as more searches happen on mobile compared to desktop. Yet, at the moment, ranking is still primarily based on the desktop version of a website .

When this happens, the links and content of your Mobile website, along with any other variables -- rate, user experience and so on -- are the key drivers of your search engine visibility. Desktop will likely still be a factor, but it will be in a secondary capacity. Mobile first.

The writing's on the wall here, folks -- mobile Has been significant for a good while now, but 2017 is the year that it will become the key factor in your search for improved positions and conversion rates from site visitors.

The good news is that this represents a Opportunity For those who really put in the work to develop an advantage over their competition. It will take work, but climbing over this barrier is the way forward, and doing so before your rivals will put your website in better stead.

Mobile-friendly approach

Our primary focus in gaining this advantage is to Look at just how we provide mobile-friendly content. There are three possible approaches::

Responsive web design

Dynamic content

Separate URLs (mobile site)

Responsive website design is Google's recommended Way to tackle mobile-friendly sites and, as such, is the approach you should take if you don't have very strong reasons not to.

Reactive design has been around for a while, so This is not a new idea. However, we still see sites which are technically responsive while not providing a solid experience for mobile users.

Finally, responsive design is just a small Part of creating truly mobile-friendly sites.

Mobile optimization

Google has a number of tools for testing for mobile usability and, beyond that, Search Console has
A cell usability report that details problems on a page-by-page level.

You should utilize these tools while developing Your new site and use Search Console to keep tabs on problems throughout the life of the site.

Search Console looks at the following mobile usability issues:

Flash use -- Most Mobile browsers do not render Flash and, as such, you might want to use more modern technologies.

Viewport not configured --
The viewport metatag aids browsers in scaling a page to suit a particular device.

Fixed-width viewport -- This
Problem attempts to circumvent mobile design with fixed width pages and is best shelved when a responsive design is adopted.

Content not sized to viewport -- Here the page content does not fit the window, and a User must scroll. This can be fixed with relative rather than fixed widths.

Small font size -- This
Is a scaling issue and requires users to pinch the display to zoom in.

Touch elements too close -- This is a frequent usability issue where it is too tough to tap a given element without also hitting the neighboring element.

Interstitial usage -- A
Full-screen pop-up frequently represents poor user experience on a mobile device and is something that Google is seeking to crack down on in 2017.

These are the key technical elements that Google
Is searching for and reporting on to webmasters.

Optimizing your site to eliminate these issues may Have positive effects on the way the usability of your site is rated by Google and certainly has positive implications for users. Again, win-win.

Mobile optimization resources:

Mobile-Friendly Websites -- https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/

Mobile-Friendly Test -- https://search.google.com/search-console/mobile-friendly

Mobile Usability Report -- https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6101188?hl=en

Page speed

Page rate is significant on all devices, but it Can be critically important on mobile when users are out and about searching for quick answers. A page which may load relatively fast on a WiFi network might not be quite so snappy on a mobile data network. 4G has delivered some fantastic speed improvements, but coverage (in the UK, at least) is not something which can be relied upon.

There are, however, a range of best practices for Improving page speed and, once more, Google has come to our aid with the PageSpeed insights tool. This enables us to readily assess how quickly our pages load and get some pointers on what we can do to improve.

Page rate insights is now built into the Mobile-Friendly test:

https://search.google.com/search-console/mobile-friendly

https://testmysite.withgoogle.com/ -- the more
attractive front end

To show how this works, I will share Details below for a small local B2C business called Vinyl to Digital, which agreed for me to use them as a case study.

Here's the output from Google's testmysite.withgoogle.com tool:

We Can see some obvious recommendations for technical improvements here:

Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and
CSS in above-the-fold content.

Enable compression.

Optimize images.

Minify CSS.

Leverage browser caching.

This is a WordPress site and, as such, most of
These are rather simple tasks. There exist plugins that will tackle the vast majority of this without any costly development time.

We can also see an overview of page loading times Within Google Analytics from the Behavior > Site Speed report.

Here We can observe that average page load is almost four seconds, which is above the ideal two- to three-second loading period. We can also see that nearly half of that is attributed to the average server response time.

Making the basic improvements from the PageSpeed Insights instrument and finding a quicker hosting partner could probably get the loading time down to around two seconds.

The main takeaway here is that you can get
Accurate metrics on loading time and clear insights on which you can do to improve matters. You will have to customize this to your own CMS or strategy, but you can often get 80 percent of the results with just 20 percent of the campaign.

We also can not talk about mobile page speed without considering Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). AMP has been designed to enable the often slow, clunky and frustrating mobile web to load immediately anywhere.

Be fast. It makes your users and search engines happy.

Page speed resources:

Mobile-Friendly Evaluation -- https://search.google.com/search-console/mobile-friendly

Website Test -- https://testmysite.withgoogle.com/

Google Analytics -- https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1205784?hl=en

Make the Web Faster -- https://developers.google.com/speed/

AMP Pages -- https://www.ampproject.org/