Hit Refresh on Your Thinking: Making Your Website Mobile Friendly

More than 50% of all website traffic now comes from smartphones and tablets. Any website can be accessed on a mobile device, but the importance is in the mobile-friendliness of your dealership’s website. But what does it mean to be a mobile-friendly website? A mobile-friendly website is easily accessible, readable and immediately usable on a smartphone or tablet. Essentially it is a desktop website shrunk down to fit on a mobile device without the user having to pinch or zoom in to read the content.

There are numerous factors that are important when it comes to optimizing your mobile website, but we will touch on the top 3 crucial aspects.

  1. Site Load Time

Your mobile website needs to be quick! According to Google, 53% of consumers will abandon a mobile site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load and for every second delay after that, conversions drop by up to 20%. Those are some intimidating percentages, especially for dealers since the average automotive mobile site takes 9 seconds to load.

Your site’s load time is also important to your search rankings. Starting in July 2018, Google says that page speed will be a ranking factor in mobile searches. This update will affect websites that have some of the slowest load times on mobile.

So what’s the solution to a slow site load time on your mobile site?

  • Reduce the amount of content on your pages
  • Shrink your image and video file size
  • Use a caching plugin
  • Limit the number of scripts running on a page
  • Render blocking scripts

  1. Mobile Friendly Forms

The main goal of a website visit is for the consumer to fill out a form and become a lead, which is why it’s critically important that your mobile website’s forms are quick and easy to fill out.

When filling out a contact form or inquiry form, consumers don’t want to fill out a dozen different fields or feel like they are writing an essay. In fact, 97% of consumers will abandon a mobile site if there are too many form fields. There is a simple solution to this-minimize the amount of information you are asking for. Only collect the most important information and when possible offer other ways to give information other than typing.

Another factor to pay attention to when using forms on your site is where you place field labels. Natural instinct might make you think the form field label should be placed to the left of the field, but this either shortens the size of the field or makes the user scroll horizontally. Having the label inside the form and disappearing once typing begins is also a bad idea. The most mobile-friendly solution for form field label placement is to put them above the field or using a floating label.

Finally, make sure that when a form is asking for information that the appropriate keyboard is shown. For example, if the form is asking for numbers, the dial pad or number keyboard will be the one that is shown. This will help reduce mistakes and increase form completion time.

  1. Responsive Text, Images, and Videos

If a site visitor can’t read, see, or watch the content on your website, then they are not receiving your messaging or obtaining the information they are looking for. This is why your text, images, and videos all must be responsive on your mobile site. Text must be large enough to read so that users don’t have to zoom, but not too large that they have to scroll to see it all. With images and videos, you want to make sure that they are coded and formatted specifically for the mobile website. If they aren’t, they could either not load at all or load at full size so that the user will be unable to view all of the content.

Although these are only a few of many factors that can affect the mobile-friendliness of your website, by paying attention to site load time, mobile-friendly form fields, and responsive content, you can ensure that your site visitors have a positive mobile experience. If you need help creating a mobile-friendly website or looking for more information on the topic, contact us at credmond@dom360.com.

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