7 Problem Areas to Check on Your Website from Desktop to Mobile

Nearly 60% of the time people start their searches for nearly anything on a mobile device. Much of the time, they even complete purchases without ever going to a desktop or even a laptop. This means your website must look and work just as well on a mobile device as it does on a desktop.

While you may have a responsive theme and even WordPress plugins that promise to make your site look great on mobile devices, you need to check those things for yourself. Here are seven areas to check on your website from desktop to mobile.

1. Speed

Your website needs to be fast no matter what platform someone accesses it from. The average person will leave any webpage if it takes more than 4 seconds to load and find one that is even faster. That means if your site is slow, especially on mobile, you will lose business, readers, and more.

There are a ton of free speed test programs. Find and use them and check your site on as many different types of devices and web connection that you can. Speed is essential.

2. Menus

Beautiful navigation menus that don’t work on mobile? Virtually useless. These menus need to work both mobile and desktop, and although the operation will be slightly different on mobile, it should be intuitive as well.

If a person cannon figure out how to navigate your mobile site, and quickly, they will simply bounce to your competition who has done a better job of designing and setting things up. Don’t let this happen to you.

3. Forms

Subscriber forms and other forms are the same. Gorgeous ones on your desktop may not respond well on a mobile platform. You need to check and make sure they do. This is one of the primary things to keep in mind when choosing a contact form builder.

The key is that the form must work the same way on mobile or desktop as much as possible. For return customers, they should feel familiar, and for new ones they should seem secure, simple, and intuitive.

4. Photos

The biggest problem or at least most common problem with mobile speed? Photos. Photos that are too large and do not resize for mobile automatically will slow your lightning website to a crawl. With faster cell and internet speeds, it can be tempting to leave those photos in place, but when a customer is away from that speed, it spells disaster.

Use plugins, program your theme properly, and you will not have this issue, but always check and make sure the safeguards you put in place are actually doing their job.  For WordPress users, WP Smush is a preferred favorite amongst developers.

5. Readability

How about the flow of text? You would think that by now, most businesses would have this figured out, but they often don’t. If a customer has to move your site around to see all of the text or scroll too much to see photos that do not fit on their screen, your site is not very readable.

This can not only affect customers who will leave your site for another one, but it will also affect your Google rankings in mobile search results, a big reason you need to be onboard with the Google AMP initiative.

6. Share Buttons

The other thing people access on their mobile devices? Social media. If they are going to share your site or your blog post on social media, they will probably do so from their phone. What does this mean to you? If your social media share buttons are not easy to find and don’t work well on your mobile site, your content will not get shared.

There are a number of plugins and social media buttons and bars that you can add to your site, but be sure they are compatible with both mobile and desktop, and then test them yourself. If they do not work the way you want them too, select another option.

7. Advertisements

This may sound like another silly one, but if you are making some money from native ads, you need to make sure that they show up and work on mobile devices. Why? For the same reason as all of the things we talked about above: If they don’t work and are not responsive, then readers will not click on them, and you will not make money.

Conclusion

The mobile functionality of your site is vital to your business success, in everything from readability and sharing to forms and photos. Make sure you are checking to ensure that your site works on both platforms equally well so you do not miss out on potential income.

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