According to What's the Big Data, in 2024 over 60% of Internet traffic is over mobile devices. A decade ago, it was less than 30%. Along with the emergence of more mobile traffic, there have been big shifts in web design and search engine optimization principles. If your site doesn't account for these trends, you are likely frustrating your visitors and your search engine ranking is dropping.

1. Responsive Design
   When websites first emerged, designers only had to be concerned with desktop screens. Today, each website must be designed with phones, tablets, computer monitors, TV screens, and everything in between. In essence, this is 3-4 websites in one. While there are developer tools available to simplify this process, intentional decisions must be made. Does content wrap? Is it hidden on certain screens? How does it line up with other elements? If you are looking to update your site to a responsive one, it's important to understand this process has grown in complexity over the years.
   
   
2. Speed
   Mobile devices experience different Internet speeds depending on where they are. This means that webpages must load quickly. Also, search engines take this into account when ranking pages. The difficulty comes in that the other factors required to make a site mobile-friendly can slow pages down. From the server to the code, from the content to the content delivery network (CDN), everything needs to be considered and planned out to ensure quick and meaningful load times.
   
   
3. Longer Pages and Less Clicks
   With mobile devices, it's much easier to scroll down than to click through multiple pages for information. When computer monitors were the main design consideration, it was about putting as much information up top without requiring scrolling. This meant tabs and nested pages. Today, that's largely been replaced by long pages designed to communicate a message. Content priorities, font sizes, and shortcuts to scroll further all have to be considered when laying out a page. It's important to develop a strategy that keeps a visitor's attention and leads them along a journey on your site to ultimately contact you.
   
   
4. Bigger Fonts and More Space
   Mobile devices are touch devices. This means links and other interactive content need to be easy to click. This eliminates small fonts, different links close together, and things that rely on hovering. Ensuring adequate font sizes and spacing between elements is critical to not only mobile navigation but also to search engines that consider navigability when establishing rankings.
   
   
5. Less Words and More Elements
   With longer pages and advancements in caching and compression technologies, visitors want to read less and be shown more. On small, mobile screens, pictures, videos, and moving text a preferable to a screen full of words. Blogs and News sections where in-depth information is expected, text can be welcome. But, when promoting products and services, pictures and videos that make your point quickly are preferred.

How can Stratimar help?

Is your website not mobile-friendly or looking dated? Contact us today to see how we can make your website more effective.