The reality of today’s world is that most people use their tablets and smartphones, not traditional computers, to look at websites. In fact, in 2022 more than half of all online traffic came from mobile devices. While your WordPress website may look just fine on a computer screen, if it isn’t optimized for mobile users you could be losing out on a large portion of your potential audience.
To stay relevant in today’s market, you need to ensure that anyone can use your site — no matter what device they are viewing it from. Luckily, there are lots of simple ways you can tweak your WordPress website so that it looks and works great for everyone. The following are some tips for making your WordPress website more mobile-friendly:
A mobile-friendly theme is the first step to creating a site that’s optimized for mobile. The best WordPress themes are responsive, meaning they adjust their layout automatically as you resize your browser window. This makes it easy to view your site on a desktop computer, laptop, or tablet – no matter what size screen you have.
To ensure that your theme is responsive:
It’s a common mistake to think people will want to access all of your WordPress website’s pages on mobile devices—especially if you have a lot of content. However, this can be detrimental to your site’s speed and usability. In fact, users won’t even bother scrolling down past the first few pages unless they have specific interests in mind. This means that offering too many menu options may not only be frustrating for visitors who are trying to reach specific content but also limits the amount of traffic that comes through from search engines like Google because it doesn't appear at the top of their results list (the first few pages comprise 80% of all clicks).
When it comes to images, the more you can optimize them, the better.
If you’re using stock photos in your blog posts, be sure to check whether they are in JPEG or PNG format and then find out their dimensions. If you are uploading your own photos from a digital camera or phone with the built-in camera app, make sure that the image is saved as a JPEG file with no compression applied (we recommend saving all images at 100% quality).
You should also resize them before uploading them onto WordPress if they are too large for mobile devices: most modern phones have screens around 3 inches wide so an image that is more than 1000 pixels wide will not display correctly on these devices as it will appear pixelated or blurry when scaled down. If you want to compress an image for faster page loading speed (or if there is too much data being transferred), choose a tool like TinyPNG which allows users to reduce file sizes by converting their image into a more compressed format without losing any quality whatsoever
Social media sharing buttons are an important part of any blog. They allow people to easily share your content with their friends, followers, and subscribers on social media.
A simple way to add these buttons is by using a WordPress plugin called AddToAny Share Buttons (available for free from the WordPress repository). Setting up this plugin is easy and you can customize the look and feel of your buttons as well as restrict which social networks they appear on based on what platform you use.
It's also important to make sure your font size is large enough for mobile users. You should use a font size of at least 18px, which should be easy to read and click on. If you have buttons or links on your WordPress website, ensure that they are at least 44x44 pixels in size. This will make it easier for mobile users to tap on them without having to zoom in and out repeatedly.
Flash and Java are not supported on mobile devices so you should remove them from your site if you want to optimize for users of mobile devices. Flash is also not accessible to screen readers, which means that people with visual impairments will find it difficult or impossible to use flash-based sites.
Flash can cause problems with mobile devices too, especially when it comes to loading times (or ‘page loading time’). If an animated element were embedded in your website, it would need to load before the rest of your website does – this may cause delays in loading other parts of your site which could mean that some visitors might leave midway through waiting for something else to load.
If you want visitors using mobiles or tablets to access all parts of your WordPress website without any interruptions caused by animations or other things like Flash, HTML5 is the way forward!
Pop-ups and pop-unders are common methods for web developers to get people’s attention. These days, however, most internet users have grown to hate them—and for good reason. Pop-ups and pop-unders are distracting, they interrupt the user experience, they can be annoying (especially when they appear over important content on your WordPress website), and sometimes they even contain malware that infects your computer. Many browsers now have features that will automatically block these types of ads
If you do use pop-up or pop-under ads on your site (which you probably shouldn’t), make sure that the ads don’t appear until after someone has scrolled down at least 20% of the page—otherwise, it will just irritate people who want to view what you actually offer on your website!
The content of your website is, of course, the most important element. But it's also one that can be enhanced by making sure it's scannable.
Using a responsive WordPress design theme is the most important thing you can do to make sure your WordPress website works well on mobile devices. A responsive design means that the layout of your site will automatically adjust itself on different screen sizes, so that no matter what device someone uses, they’ll still get an optimal viewing experience.
Here are some other things to look for when evaluating a theme:
Have you ever clicked on a link to a video only to be asked if you want to watch it in your browser or download it? If so, then you’re probably familiar with the fact that videos can run pretty slowly on mobile devices. This is because they take up more data than images do and that can make them difficult to load quickly.
If you need visuals in your post, try using smaller ones so they don’t weigh down the page too much. If it’s still necessary for the reader to see what they’re reading about, use alternative ways of displaying these visuals (like screenshots). You can easily check this by uploading a large image onto one of your posts and seeing how well it loads on different devices before publishing it.
The Google Mobile-Friendly Test tool is a great way to see how mobile-friendly your site is. To use the tool, enter your site’s URL into the search bar and click “Search.” You will then see a message that verifies whether or not the page you entered is mobile-friendly, as well as some tips on how to make it more mobile-friendly if it isn't already. If you find that your WordPress website isn't mobile-friendly, don't worry! There are steps you can take right away to improve its performance on mobile devices.
If you’re still using a normal homepage layout, it’s time to change that. Since the majority of your traffic will be mobile users, the information on your site must be easy for them to see and understand.
A great way to make sure this is possible is by adding an at-a-glance widget. This widget displays information about the most recent post or page, making it easy for visitors who are checking out your site for the first time.
Search is a must for mobile users. It makes things easier for them to find what they are looking for quickly and easily.
Search is good for SEO, too. Google looks at the number of searches that happen on a WordPress website in order to determine how popular it is. As a result, if your site has many people searching on it, you will get better rankings in Google’s search results.
Search can also be beneficial in terms of accessibility: some users who have disabilities may not be able to use other methods of navigation such as links or buttons because these require fine motor skills that may be difficult or impossible to perform with limited mobility due to injury or illness (e.g., spinal cord injuries).
If you’re wondering how to make your WordPress website mobile-friendly, there are a number of things you can do. By following these steps and making the most of these great tools, you can ensure that your site is optimized for all devices. As mobile internet usage continues to increase, this is something that more and more people will be looking for when they visit your website. Are there any other tips that have helped you to make your site more user-friendly? Let us know in the comments section below!
