If your web design and development isn’t mobile friendly, you might as well just hand over your money to your competitors.

Nearly 60% of Internet users prefer browsing on a phone or tablet – and they do all of their online shopping on it!  They use Google to look for businesses, compare products and read reviews, even when they’re already in the physical store.

You reach customers who are already intent on buying. One out of two mobile visitors go to the locations they search within one to two days. Some of them are already in the car, and if your store or clinic don’t show up on their phones, they’ll drive straight past you.

In fact, conversion rates for mobile users are 64% higher than desktops.

Mobile friendliness is no longer an optional afterthought. You don’t design a website and then fix it to look good on a tablet or phone. From the beginning, your web design and development assumes that it will be seen on the small screen, and design your website accordingly.

Here are some ways to check if your web design and development is mobile-optimized.

HOW LONG DOES MY WEBSITE TAKE TO LOAD ON A PHONE?

More than half of mobile users will just leave a page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. What can slow a page down? Very large images that take forever to load, using Flash elements, a lot of external links to Youtube or other media libraries, and social media widgets.

Also, some web designs require huge resource files that your phone needs to download and run before you even see the page. These pages look great on your desktop, but mobile users will never know that because they gave up on the downloading even before they saw it.

IS IT EASY TO FIND YOUR MOST IMPORTANT CONTENT?

How much scrolling and clicking does your user need to do to find important information like your contact numbers, address, or list of services? Are your call to action buttons easy to spot even when your user is distracted? Remember, mobile users are often walking, eating lunch, browsing products on a store shelf, or half-asleep on the MRT. Don’t make them work or think to find what they’re looking for.

IS IT FRUSTRATING TO VIEW AND USE ON THE PHONE?

Do your mobile users have to squint to read the text, zoom in or out to properly view a photo, or install add-ons just to view certain elements? Do they have to type in a lot of information in your sign up form – a huge hassle when you’re using a smaller phone keyboard? Do the page elements get mixed up or distorted when they switch devices?

Write down all the pain points that a user will encounter while navigating a site. Your bounce rates will flag some of the pages that are frustrating them and analyze what could be happening from the user perspective.  Talk about these with your web design and development team.

ARE YOU MEETING THE NEED OR QUESTION?

Mobile users make very specific searches, and you have to give them what they want as soon as they land and then lead them to a solution in a simple and intuitive way. Anticipate their next step. For example, if they’re shopping for a product and happen to land on your page, you should have a way for them to click on a photo and be led to the shopping cart, a review, a list of stores where they can buy it, or a coupon that they can use right now. If you don’t give that immediate call to action, you lose them. They don’t know what other step to take, and they’re not likely to go back to the main menu to hunt for that information.

That’s actually true for websites too, but it’s especially important for mobile because searching a site is harder to do on a small screen.

AM I TAKING ADVANTAGE OF MOBILE TECHNOLOGY?

There are digital marketing campaigns that work perfectly with mobile. So you don’t have to stop at making a mobile-friendly website; make it part of a mobile-powered brand strategy. Try location-based marketing. Use WhatsApp or Facebook messenger chatbots. Make it easy for customers to interact with your brand through the phone – not just to read about you, but to interact with you.