Here’s a slightly uncomfortable truth about most business websites. They’re designed on a big monitor, reviewed on a laptop in a meeting, and signed off by someone sitting at a desk. Then the majority of the people who actually visit see them on a phone, often one-handed, sometimes on a patchy signal. A mobile friendly website starts from that reality.
You don’t need to be a designer to check whether you have a mobile friendly website. You need your phone, ten minutes, and a willingness to be honest about what’s annoying. Here’s what to look for.
Before you start
Test on a real phone, not by shrinking a browser window on your computer. Real devices reveal problems that desktop previews miss, such as tap targets that are too close together or pop-ups that won’t close. If you can, check on both an iPhone and an Android phone, because they don’t always behave the same way.
Use mobile data rather than office Wi-Fi for at least one test. That’s closer to how many customers will experience the site.
Finally, look at the pages that matter most, not just the homepage. Your top service page, your contact page and any page you send paid traffic to deserve the same attention. Visitors from search and ads often never see the homepage at all.
What to check, page by page
The first screen
- Can you tell what the business does without scrolling?
- Is the headline readable without zooming?
- Is there an obvious way to get in touch, such as a tappable phone number or a button?
- Does a cookie banner or pop-up cover most of the screen? If so, can you close it easily?
Reading and tapping
- Text size: body text should be comfortable to read at arm’s length. If you’re squinting, it’s too small.
- Line length: paragraphs should wrap neatly with no sideways scrolling.
- Contrast: light grey text on white looks elegant on a design mock-up and is hard to read outdoors.
- Buttons and links: you should be able to tap them with a thumb without hitting the one next to it.
- Phone numbers and emails: tapping them should start a call or open an email, not just highlight text.
The menu
On mobile, the main menu usually collapses behind an icon. That’s fine, but check it properly.
- Is the menu icon easy to find and tap?
- Do drop-down sections open and close sensibly?
- Can you close the menu again without reloading the page?
- Is the most important action, such as “Get a quote”, visible without opening the menu at all?
Forms
Fill in your own contact form on your phone, start to finish. Does the right keyboard appear for email and phone fields? Are the fields big enough? If you make a mistake, is it clear what went wrong? Does the confirmation message appear somewhere you can see it?
This is one of the most revealing tests you can do, and it’s where a lot of mobile enquiries are lost.
Images and layout
- Do images load reasonably quickly, and do they fit the screen?
- Is anything important cut off, such as text baked into an image?
- Do columns stack in a sensible order? Sometimes a desktop layout stacks so that a heading ends up below the thing it’s introducing.
- Does the page jump around as it loads, making you tap the wrong thing?
If something on your site is mildly irritating to you, it’s a reason to leave for a customer who has no loyalty to you yet.
Speed
A mobile friendly website has to be quick as well as tidy. You don’t need technical tools for a first check. Load a few key pages on mobile data and count. If you’re waiting more than a few seconds for something useful to appear, visitors are too. Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool will give you a more detailed picture if you want to dig into it, and your web designer can explain the results.
Turning what you find into a mobile friendly website
Write down every problem, however small, with a screenshot. Then sort them into three groups: things that stop people getting in touch, things that make the site look unprofessional, and minor niggles. Fix the first group first.
Many issues, such as text size, button spacing and pop-up behaviour, are quick fixes on a well built site, and they go a long way towards a mobile friendly website. If the list is long and the fixes are awkward, it may be a sign the site wasn’t built with mobile in mind, and a website redesign could be better value than patching it. Either way, our maintenance and support team can work through the list with you.
