With the prevalance of iPhones, Android devices, and tablets, the need for a website to be fully usable on a mobile device is becoming more and more necessary. Some sites (including most of those built in wordpress) function fully on mobile devices without many changes – or even no changes at all!
But there are a lot of sites that become completely unusable on a mobile device, and thus the customer cannot use the site at all.
Without pointing out any particular sites, here are a few examples of things that should be removed from your site completely.
- Intro videos and animations. Most of these are done in Adobe Flash. Apple’s iOS devices do not support Flash, and the vast majority of Android users do not have Flash installed. If the user cannot get to your site because they have to click on an intro that they can’t see, they can’t get to your site.
- Parts of the site that are set with fixed dimensions. All dimensions of pictures, borders, text areas, etc on your site should be set with a percentage value. If they are set at a fixed number, those areas will probably overlap the other areas of your site when they load.
- Links on your site that require a download. Anything that has to be downloaded to be viewed. Just assume that it will not work at all on a mobile device. The notable exception to this are PDF documents. All major mobile devices support PDFs out of the box.
How can you see if your site is mobile ready? Simple, just browse to it on a smartphone. If you see things that don’t look right, give us a call. Most mobile conversions are pretty straightforward and can be done quickly.