Ananya Srivastava, a tech writer at EnablingBiz eSolutions, offers advice on making your website more mobile-friendly.

There have been endless discussions about how the virtual world is going mobile and how all businesses would do wonders if they, too, decided to tap this market in a full-fledged fashion. However, looking at the scope that this semi-explored market provides, there cannot be enough articles and innovations on how to make the mobile experience a better one for the users – not yet.

When it comes to user experience, even the tiny aspects that you ignore may affect your conversion rate, and as far as mobile users are concerned, the role of user experience becomes even more prominent. Mobile users easily lose interest or patience compared to desktop users. Persuading and driving them to hit the call to action button on mobile is comparatively a real challenge, so sites that can provide the best mobile experience win the day.

Here are some things you can do to ensure you provide the best mobile experience to your users.

Take care of the load time: it is perhaps one of the most important aspects of making your website mobile-friendly. Did you know that for every 1-second delay in the loading time, a whopping 7 per cent reduction is seen in sales?
Be wary of concentrating too much on making the website attractive and too little on its load time, especially on a mobile screen. The mobile customer, is impatient, compared to the traditional desktop one, and would, in all probability, bounce off the website, if the load time exceeds two – three seconds. If you are lucky, or the visitor is a loyal one, then you may get an additional six – seven seconds before he/she decides that the wait is not worth the while.

Keep the number of clicks to a minimum: ensure that there are as few layers as possible leading up to the product page. This problem is amplified when the visitor is using a 3G connection that will make this time seem like an eternity. The levels or layers should be kept to three at most.

All content should be crisp and lucid: with limited patience levels, do not irk your visitors by giving them lengthy information about products and items. Be crisp and precise with details about items not exceeding one or two lines.

Formatting should not make reading the text an impossible task: an estimated 48 per cent of mobile users end up on a site which had illegible text. No prizes for guessing for what happened next. They abandoned the site.

Keep the layout uncluttered to ease navigation around the website: web designers should understand that merely cramming every possible detail from the PC version on to the mobile is not ideal. This will only end up making the website look cluttered and the visitor will have a difficult time accessing information.

Keep the structure flat: this will ensure that even the deepest layers of information are crawlable for Google-bots and that, they too, pop up in the sear results. It’s worth noting that web users tend to search for the company and the product through search engines, instead of directly typing in the URL in the address bar – even when the website is known to them.

Place the Javascript at the page-bottom and CSS at the top of the page: putting style sheets in the document head of the page prohibits progressive rendering, so browsers will block rendering to avoid having to redraw elements of the page. In most cases, users will face a white page until the page is loaded completely. This also helps you to make a standard web page according to W3 standards. And put your JavaScript code at the bottom of the page for the same reason.

Keep the labels big to accommodate fat thumbs: ensure that the part where the user has to tap and click to navigate ahead is big enough for adult fingers. Labels which require any input from the user, too should also be kept big, to avoid any accidental clicks. Follow the 44×44 rule: that is making all the relevant icons and labels 44×44 pixels. After all, keeping the calls to action big enough is vital to the business.

Use icons instead of lists or texts: incorporating as many icons, especially to indicate payment options, shopping carts, is a good idea. Not only is the need for text reduced or even eliminated, they also make the site look aesthetically pleasing. Reading text on a website is a cumbersome job when you are on a mobile.

Keep the number of menu options to a minimum: each page of the website should not have more than 5ive options on the menu. Furthermore, space the option-labels out, so that they are easier to read and select.

Incorporate a search box into the layout: make sure it is prominently displayed, and use a predictive search too to save time for the user.

Make your mobile site SEO-friendly: remember that the online behaviour of the same consumer may change when he uses a tablet or a smartphone rather than a PC. Keywords used, for instance, may be different in the case of mobile users. Thus, study and focus on those keywords.

Keep contact forms and other calls to action that require lengthy user input crisp: incorporate fewer fields in contact forms and payment processes. Also, if there happens to be an error, ensure that when the user is redirected to the already filled-out page, the information stays put and he/she is not required to fill it out all over again.

Create a custom native app to connect with your consumers, but don’t just rely on this alone: a mobile-friendly website is just as important, because some devices may not be able to support the app.

Ananya Srivastava is a tech writer at EnablingBiz eSolutions