- Mobile search makes up more than half
of all searches on Google
and for many advertisers,
most traffic comes from people on their mobile phones.
That means to make certain the WordPress site you design
are accessible to more people,
you'll need to make sure those sites
are also mobile-friendly.
So ready to make your WordPress sites mobile-friendly
and attracted to smartphone and handheld device visitors?
Here's what you need to do
to optimize your WordPress sites for mobile.
- Oh, yeah, yes.
Let me just put my mobile device away
and we'll talk about the importance of testing
your WordPress site.
You don't know what you don't know
and your design may look great on your smartphone,
which I was checking out Nealey's site
actually before he interrupted me,
but that doesn't mean it looks just as good
on another device
and designers need to anticipate how it will look
on different desktops, smartphones, tablets,
as well as how it looks across different browsers
and operating systems.
And Google's free mobile-testing tool
makes it easy and free to check your WordPress sites
for mobile-friendliness.
It's really simple.
Just enter your site's URL
and then Google measures the accessibility, readability,
navigation of the site on mobile devices
and you'll get a green pass message or a red fail message
along with suggestions for improvement.
- Now make sure that you have the same version of content
for both desktop and mobile.
If your mobile site has less content than your desktop site,
Google's mobile-first indexing
will cause your site to lose traffic.
So make sure your mobile and desktop site
has the same structured data, metadata,
and descriptive titles.
If your desktop site has plenty of content,
but making it all fit on a mobile screen is a nightmare,
don't delete anything.
Instead, get creative by using accordions, dropdowns,
or tabs.
- That's right, and be sure to implement a responsive theme.
Responsive WordPress themes
ensure that your WordPress content images
automatically adjust to fit the device
and screen size being used.
And without a responsive design,
your site will not adjust to mobile devices
and will deliver a poor user experience.
Always check to make sure you are using
the most up to date version of any WordPress theme
to be sure your website design
will be responsive to mobile users.
You can also quickly optimize your site
using WordPress software plugins.
- The next thing to keep in mind
is to choose mobile-friendly plugins.
Now, plugins can help optimize WordPress sites for mobile
and they also easily deliver added functionality
to your site like forums, shopping carts, buttons,
and so much more.
Check to be sure that these plugins are mobile-friendly.
When creating new websites,
use the most updated version of the plugin
to ensure that mobile-friendly functionality.
The good news is that most new plugins
or currently updated plugins
are made with responsiveness in mind.
However, when adding responsive functionality
to older, non-responsive plugins,
it can limit the level of customizations available.
In these instances,
you just may wanna switch to a WordPress theme
that is inherently responsive
instead of using plugins to remedy the situation.
- Now, you want to avoid full-screen pop-ups.
As users, we've come to hate intrusive pop-ups
and how difficult they can be sometimes to just get rid of
and thankfully, Google agrees.
It penalizes intrusive mobile pop-ups
that cover the main content of the page,
but as web designers,
you know the value they can deliver in driving engagement
when they don't interfere
with the mobile navigation and content.
Avoid full-screen pop-ups to make your site mobile-friendly.
If you must, absolutely must include them,
display small ones on second pages or page bottoms
or when visitors are about to leave your site.
Test them to be sure they close easily on all devices
and you can also avoid pop-ups entirely.
Instead, use a CTA or banner that leads to landing pages.
- Now our last tip here for you
is to simplify on-site graphics.
Large images or too many graphics
can take up valuable webpage real estate
and can distract from important content messaging.
Plus, graphics and images
are a major cause of slow load times
or just poor user experience for your mobile webpages.
You should be using the updated version of WordPress,
Version 4.4 or better.
Hopefully, you're on six now and WordPress themes
so that your site will automatically serve
the smallest images and graphics
according to screen sizes and device specs.
Google recommends that you use
the same descriptive image alt text,
captions, file names, and text for your mobile
as you do for your desktop.
- Your websites need to be accessible
to as many people as possible,
so make sure you design with mobile in mind
and follow our tips
and you'll be boosting their traffic and rankings
with a mobile-friendly WordPress site.
All right, that's a wrap,
but your journey doesn't have to end here.
We have over 300 videos for you to watch.
- So be sure to like, comment, subscribe.
Thanks for watching.
This is The Journey.