Top 5 things to consider for mobile user experience
More people search for answers online using their phones than they do on desktops, laptops and tablets. So when you’re designing and optimising your website, you want to keep mobile users at the forefront of your mind.
A report from Hitwise published in January 2023 says that nearly 60 percent of all online searches are carried out on a mobile device, with some sectors (Food and Beverage) reaching 72 percent.
It’s obvious that you want users of your website to enjoy their time on your site, to make things as clear and as easy as possible for them. But, it might not be that obvious where to start making sure User Experience is as good as possible.
User Experience (UX) is an expression you might have heard bandied about. It’s pretty self-explanatory - it’s all about making website design decisions that help your users to navigate your website or app easily.
With good UX design, you can increase the chance of a user donating to your charity; or persuade a visitor to visit your church or organisation. Or even complete a sale on your business site!
It’s important to think about a mobile’s user experience on your website.
But, where to start?
Top 5 best practices for mobile UX
Always think about your user first.
Not the product you want to sell, or the event you want to promote - approach designing and optimising your website for mobile users by looking at it through their eyes…
1. Clear navigation
If the users of your site don’t know where to find the information they are looking for, they aren’t going to enjoy using your website.
Navigation is like a map for your users. So, you’ve got to make it clear.
First, Get organised.
You can get clever with looking at your website analytics to see which areas are most visited by mobile users and prioritise them in your site navigation menus.
Or, if you don’t have analytics to hand, think about what is going to drive sales, interest, sign ups, or donations for your charity or business?
Second, make buttons, calls-to-action and instructions large and clear.
Mobile screens are smaller than laptops, desktops and tablets, (we’re not just stating the obvious we promise!) So, you’ve got to make sure that your information is made as easy to find and see as possible.
Are the buttons big enough? Do calls-to-action have clear instructions? It is obvious where people are supposed to click?
If you’re struggling with knowing where to start in designing a website navigation or putting together a menu for your website, get in touch and Wild SEO Agency can help you get started!
2. Loading time
We all know from experience how annoying it is if a website takes a long time to load. Loading time as possible is crucial for mobile UX.
There are lots of variables that can impact the speed at which your website loads.
But, If you just do one thing to improve your site's loading time, it’s to check the size of your images. Images that are too large slow down the loading time of a website.
To learn a lot about this subject, we recommend this in depth video tutorial on page speed optimisation from Moz. It’s a good’un!
3. Short cuts
Everyone loves a short cut! If you can make it easier, and faster, for your mobile users to navigate to where they want to go on your website - you’re on to a winner.
For example: Click-to-call: where mobile users can tap on your phone number, or on a phone icon, to immediately call you - instead of having to go to their keypad (off of your website) and type in your number.
Think about the actions users are likely to take on your site and think of ways to streamline their experience.
4. Keep design simple
Don’t distract your users with complicated designs, like too many colours and graphics.
Think about using your site on a small screen. Every fun extra element like animation needs something called Java Script running in the background of your website to work.
Complicated Java Script and code slows things down and animation can distract your users from completing the task that they came to your website to complete.
5. Test your site
You can really quickly, and easily, test your website user experience on mobile or desktop.
Pagespeed is a free tool provided by Google, to test your website. It even gives you a list of things to address to improve UX.
If you want any help deciphering the jargon that Pagespeed gives you, or to understand how to implement any of the changes it suggests, we can help you out!
We wonder if you’ll use desktop or mobile to get in touch…?