It's safe to say that the age of mobile web browsing is well and truly upon us. While we may not have chips installed in our heads (yet), modern mobile devices are making the Internet more of an integral part of daily experience for many people - whether checking out train times, reading online news articles or shopping for birthday presents. Then they arrive at your site - it's slow to load, difficult to use and the pictures can't be seen without a magnifying glass. Will they stay and check it out, or will they bounce over to a competitor's site that downloads in half the time and is easy to navigate on their handheld device?
If the answer is the latter, what can you do to enhance your site for use on a mobile device such as a smart phone or iPad and keep your customers on your site? Here are five quick tips to help you help your visitors.
1. Think font - In any web design project, any font philosophy should be aimed towards plain and simple fonts that are easy to read, steering well away from fanciness and calligraphic splendour. On a smaller mobile screen this is even more essential and the list of suitable fonts is narrowed somewhat (bearing in mind that not all fonts will be available on all devices). As a general rule, you can't go far wrong with Arial, Times New Roman or Courier New.
2. Keep it short and snappy - Whether you're telling mobile users why they should buy your product or explaining a technical concept, don't waffle on - mobile users tend to be pushed for time, and may not stay as long as desktop surfers.
3. Viva la resolution - There's nothing like having to scroll vertically, horizontally and back in time to put off a visitor to your site. While some tablets such as iPads often have reasonably high resolutions, most mobile devices have far smaller resolution sizes than their desktop counterparts. So do your research and take some time picking a resolution for your design.
4. Put your website on a diet - By its very nature, mobile browsing tends to result in a wide variety of connection speeds. While your high-res pictures may look great when viewed via a Wi-Fi connection, they may simply not load when viewed on the bus home from work. Reduce page bloat and strip the mobile version of your site down to the essentials.
5. Break up text - With any webpage it's rarely a good idea to keep your users scrolling for too long, and if they're mobile then that's even more true. A good strategy is to have smaller blocks of text, broken up into distinct but easily navigable pages.
