Top 5 Tips for Developers: Mobile Website Optimization

Almost all mobile smartphone users in the United States use their mobile devices to view their favorite websites. As more users gain access to those websites through search engines, Search Engine Optimization for mobile sites is becoming increasingly important.

Just as the experience of viewing a website through a mobile device is much different than viewing the same site through a desktop computer, the task of optimizing your mobile site greatly differs from an optimization project for your non-mobile site.

Here are the top five tips for getting your mobile set up to speed, both for visitors as well as search engines:

• Audience Need – Determine why your visitors are visiting your site and prioritize your site relevant to your user’s needs.
  
• Simplify – Keep your mobile site simple; computer users can afford both the bandwidth and the system processing required for the latest whiz-bang technologies, mobile users cannot.
  
• Images Optional – Again, mobile use means less bandwidth, so don’t keep your visitors waiting for pages to load by using large or excessive images.
  
• Sub-Domains – Your visitors are used to your brand; mobile.yoursite.com is still better than yoursite.mobi, so keep it that way.
  
• Testing – Your users should not be your website testing crew; test your site with mobile devices and emulators, and when you’re done, test again.
  

When you’re done, keep track of your site’s statistics using Google Analytics, and see if your mobile site’s optimization was a success, or if you still have work to do.