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

Making a website mobile ready is Pretty high on the request list for companies and organizations creating a new website. But, there are a flurry of conditions surrounding mobile. Mobile friendly, mobile optimized, and a more recent term: reactive design. What's the difference between these? Why is it significant?

In fall 2012 Peter Sondergaard,
Senior vice president at Gartner, a world-wide IT analysis and research company, projected that by 2014 there'll be more internet browsing from mobile devices than on conventional desktops or laptops. We've seen our own customers' website analytics for mobile users jump from an average of 5-8percent in 2010 to 16-20% in 2011. 2012 is showing a similar increase. There's absolutely not any doubt that mobile cannot be ignored.

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

MOBILE FRIENDLY WEBSITE

Mobile friendly describes a site 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 is going to appear smaller on a telephone and might not work perfectly on a touchscreen tabletcomputer, a mobile friendly website will be perfectly functional. Many developers view mobile friendly as a"best practice" for all site developments.

Ensuring your website is mobile Friendly is crucial. As we discussed above, the percentage of mobile users is rapidly rising. What are the essential qualities of a mobile friendly site?

Text-based phone numbers, physical addresses, or email Addresses that could activate 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--don't 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 differently optimized images appear when the user is on an iPhone or other apparatus.

Why reformat? Reformatting allows The website to easily engage a large cellular audience when key purchasing decisions come up. More and more consumers are turning to their mobile devices right in the shop. Having a website developed that allows the user to easily navigate and participate from the little displays of their handheld means reaching a decision faster.

What are some Great formatting Elements that go to a mobile optimized site?

Simplified navigation which is"thumb" friendly with Large touchpoints, especially for critical contact information

Reduced graphics that don't disrupt 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 portable optimized Websites worth checking from your handheld:

RESPONSIVE DESIGN WEBSITE

As site design continues to Evolve, a fantastic type of development has come into play. Responsive design is a method of developing a site that is completely flexible regardless of device. Rather than detecting a specific browser type or device type, the website automatically orientates itself depending on the screen size of the apparatus. A blend of reformatting and re-optimizing the site as a whole give 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's active on mobile devices or need to make purchases on the move. Impulse purchases are evident, but this is every bit as critical for commodity content such as blogs or news outlets.

WHAT ABOUT SMALL BUSINESS AND
MOBILE WEB?

Mobile browsing--from tablets to Smartphones--is growing at an unprecedented rate. The consumer's enthusiasm 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 website bring a measurable return?

Exceptional questions with answers only you can provide. Every situation will be different, but give significant thought of what percentage of your site visitors are on mobile devices? Google Analytics will tell 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 visitors who Access your website from mobile devices have an experience optimized for your 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 made to account for different screen sizes and load times. Mobile optimization takes a look at site design, site structure, page rate, and much more to be sure you're not inadvertently turning mobile visitors away.

Mobile SEO Best Practices

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

Page speed

Because of hardware and connectivity issues, page speed is even More important for mobile users than desktop users. Beyond optimizing images, you will want to minify code, leverage browser caching, and decrease redirects. More information on page speed can be found on our SEO Best Practices for Page Speed page.

Don't Block CSS, JavaScript, or images

In the old days, some portable devices could not support all of These components, so webmasters of cellular sites blocked one or all three. However, for the most part that is no longer true, and the Smartphone GoogleBot wants 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 if 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 on your user's phone, which Means they'll miss out on all the fun. If you wish 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 lead to 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 with a mobile device. To show off your best work in SERPS, be as concise as possible (without sacrificing the quality of the information) when creating titles, URLs, and meta descriptions.

Use Schema.org structured data

Due to the limited screen area, a search result with abundant Snippets is even more likely to stand out than on a desktop computer. Read more about Schema.org structured data.

Optimize for local search

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

Mobile site configuration

Probably the most important decision you will make when setting up A website is deciding whether you want to use a responsive, dynamic serving, or separate website configuration. Each has its benefits and drawbacks. Google prefers responsive design but supports all three options 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 layout to automatically adapt to the size of a user's screen.

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's 420 or fewer pixels wide:

Code Sample

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

.class

[styles for This course here]

And to link to another stylesheet instead, place 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 consumers on miniature mobile displays, larger-than-average mobile screens, and even tablets can all see a website that looks designed for their apparatus.

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

Dynamic serving

If you do not have the resources for a complete site redesign or Want to show different content for mobile visitors than you do for desktop ones, one alternative would be to use one URL to display different sets of HTML and CSS depending on what kind of device your visitor is using (also called detecting user agents). This may be useful, as an instance, if you are a restaurant who wants a mobile visitor (who may be drifting your neighborhood) to see a sampling of reviews and a map to your place rather than your whole website.

Displaying different content based on the user agent is known as Dynamic serving and it's 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

(... remainder of HTTP response headers...)

Example in the Google Developers Blog.

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

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

Separate mobile URL

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

Parallel cellular sites can be as imperfect as dynamic serving Sites at sending visitors to the perfect version, so make certain to make it easy for visitors who end up in the wrong place to click over to their preferred experience.

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

SEO Basics: How to Increase 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 boost your mobile SEO, you have to improve the operation of your site, plus you need to make sure that it offers users an superb mobile experience. In this SEO basics article, you'll find an overview of what you need to do to boost your mobile website.

When is a site mobile-friendly?

A site is mobile-friendly when it:

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

loads lightning fast,

Presents content in a readable fashion, without Users having 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 has become imperative that your site is mobile-friendly. If your site is not, or not correctly, available for mobile users, you are going to lose out on a good ranking in the search engines and thus miss income. Therefore, you ought to do everything in your power to make the mobile version of your website as good as possible. In actuality, it should be excellent!

Since the beginning of This year, Google uses the mobile version of the website to ascertain its rankings. If your site is not up to scratch, or if you present less content on your mobile site, you will have a difficult time getting a good ranking. If you don't have a decent mobile version of your site however, you best make a fully working one, preferably as a responsive design. Google has a great getting started manual to get you going.

How to Increase your mobile website

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

Make sure your Website is responsive

Improve your site speed

Do not block JavaScript, HTML and CSS code

Do not use interstitials or pop-ups

Don't use too many redirects

Choose the correct viewport

Verify mobile-friendliness

Tell Google about your site

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 lives on a single URL, making it easier for Google to understand and index it.

If you use WordPress,
Chances are your motif is already responsive and can adapt to all displays. Make certain to check how your site scales in Google Chrome's Developer Tools. If it does not scale correctly, you should speak to your web developer about fixing it -- or choose a different theme.

Improve your site speed

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

Optimize images

If There's one quick Win to increase your site speed, it's this: Boost your images. Don't load those 3000 x 2000 pixel HD images on your website. Scale them to the correct size and make them smaller using a tool like ImageOptim or WordPress plugins like WP Smush.

Minify code

Every request your Site has to make has an impact on site speed. You've got to work on reducing these requests. One way of doing that is by minifying code. This means that your group and concatenate resources such as JavaScript and CSS, and as a result, the browser needs to load fewer files, resulting in a faster site. This sounds hard to execute, but a plugin like WP Rocketcan look after all your caching needs.

Browser caching

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

Reduce redirects

A redirect leads A visitor from one page that is requested to another, because the requested page was moved or deleted. While this contributes to a good user experience if done well, the more redirects you use, the slower your website will be. Do not make endless redirects. Additionally, 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've said it before, And we are going to keep saying it: Don't block assets such as JavaScript, HTML and CSS. Doing this makes it harder for Google to access your site and that could lead to bad rankings. Assess your Google Search Console to see whether you're blocking resources.

Improve legibility

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

Improve tap target sizes

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

Choose the Right viewport

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

Do not use interstitials or pop-ups

Starting this year, Google will penalize sites that use big pop-ups or interstitials to market newsletters, sign-up forms or advertisements. These often get in the way of the user immediately accessing the content they asked. Don't use these, but if you have to, be sure that you abide by Google's rules.

Test your site and inform Google about it

Before you start Working on your own mobile SEO, you need to run a Mobile-Friendly Test on Google to see where you should begin. Throughout your work, you should keep testing to find out if you make progress. If your site is optimized, you need to tell Google about it so that it can be checked 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 find 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 introduced using a stripped down presentation to be sure it gets delivered at light speed.

AMP is still Relatively new, but growing rapidly. Nearly every website can benefit from integrating this technique. For those who have a WordPress site, it is not hard to get started; just put in the official plugin. This takes care of most of the setup. You may find more information about Google's guidelines.

Conclusion

Mobile is the future,
but that future is now. Do everything you can to repair your mobile site and make it perfect, not only in Google's eyes, but, more importantly, your visitor. Mobile SEO is not only about great content and a flawless technical demonstration, but more about creating a user experience to die for. As soon as you've achieved that, you are on your way to the top!

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

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

Suffice it to say, mobile has well and truly arrived. However, 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 are still built for desktop and then dialed back for mobile. This form-fill that was mildly annoying on desktop is an absolute pig on mobile. Even if it's responsive.

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

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

Our aim here is to go the extra distance to Create fully mobile-focused websites; to delight our users and drive conversions; to use cellular optimization to develop a strategic edge over the competition. And, of course, Google would like to pleasure cellular users so we can enhance 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 an SEO best practices post for 2017, Google's Gary Illyes complimented those who

The following are three key Stats I have lifted from Google's promotional materials that clearly illustrate the value of cellular optimization:

Today, more people search on cellular phones than computers.

People are five times more likely to Leave a website if it isn't mobile-friendly.

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

Because more people search on mobile than on
Computers, cellular creates more page views. If your site isn't mobile-friendly, users are less likely to stick around. And if your website is slow, they may not even wait for the page to load.

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

The mobile-first index

The absolute 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 than desktop. Yet, at the present time, ranking is still primarily based on the desktop version of a site.

When this happens, the links and content of your Mobile site, along with any other variables -- speed, user experience and so on -- will be 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 component in your quest for improved positions and conversion rates from website visitors.

The good news is that this represents a chance For people who really put in the work to develop an advantage over their competition. It will take work, but climbing over this obstacle is the way ahead, and doing so before your rivals will put your site in better stead.

Mobile-friendly approach

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

Responsive web design

Dynamic content

Separate URLs (mobile site)

Responsive Site 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.

Responsive design has been around for a while, so This is not a new idea. But, we still see sites that are technically responsive while not providing a strong experience for mobile users.

Finally, responsive design is Only 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 mobile 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 issues throughout the life of the website.

Search Console looks at the following mobile usability issues:

Flash usage -- 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 match a particular device.

Fixed-width viewport -- This
Difficulty 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 Doesn't match the window, and a User has to 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 components too close -- This is a frequent usability issue where it's too hard 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 which Google is looking to crack down on in 2017.

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

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

Mobile optimization resources:

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

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

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

Page speed

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

There are, however, a range of best practices for Improving page speed and, once again, Google has come to our aid with the PageSpeed insights tool. This enables us to easily 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'll share Details below for a tiny local B2C business called Vinyl to Digital, which consented for me to use them as a case study.

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

We Can see some clear 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
All these are fairly simple tasks. There exist plugins that will tackle the majority of this with no costly development time.

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

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

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

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

We also can not talk about cellular page speed without considering Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). AMP was designed to allow 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 Test -- 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/