4 Mobile Web Design Tips Catering to Google’s Algorithm Shift

Responsive web design has increased in popularity with Google favoring mobile-friendly sites for Google users accessing their mobile devices. While responsive web designs can be scaled and shuffled based on the viewing screen, buttons, pages and content have to be carefully chosen by designers to ensure a mobile-friendly website.

Another option web designers have is to use an Alternate Layout where a separate website is created for mobile visitors. This is a cheaper option as revamping an entire existing website to convert it to a responsive layout is expensive. Moreover, the approach provides for great design control, flexibility and the ability to optimize your mobile site to a set of keywords and meta-data.

No matter if you decide to revamp your existing website or create an Alternate Layout for your present website, here are some web design tips from http://soapagency.co.uk worth considering.

1. Heavy content and widgets are a no-no

Mobile sites should preferably be light, fast and simple so all your parallax scrolling effects are best saved for desktops. Moreover, Google’s algorithm shift confirms that inaccessible content like Flash only give a negative impact to your rankings. So if your widget or content doesn’t enhance user experience, look for faster or easier options like quotes your customers can quickly scroll through.

2. Faster page loading

As mobile users don’t always have a Wi-Fi connection, avoid complex widgets and video and data rich websites which load slowly. Instead, optimize images for maximum compression to facilitate faster loading of pages.

3. Tiny buttons are a no-no

As touch-targets are minimally 50px by 50px, buttons shouldn’t be too small nor placed too close together. This can lead to the user accidently pushing the wrong button. A safe bet is to maintain 20px-32px of space between buttons.

4. Scroll lets you use a comfortable font size

As most mobile users surf on the go, tiny text can be difficult to read. With most mobile sites restrict zooming capabilities, take advantage of the user’s phone’s scrolling feature and create longer pages with font comfortably sized at 15px or more.

With the help of these4 web design tips, you will be able to create a mobile web design befitting Google’s algorithm shift.