Dental Management

Posted: 3 February 2012

7 ways to: Make your website mobile friendly

Author: Amy Rose-Jones

Just because you can see your website on a mobile doesn’t mean it’s mobile friendly, Amy Rose-Jones explains how to ensure your site works effectively with mobile devices

Mobile sites are designed with the needs of mobile users in mind and giving patients the best possible experience on their mobile is critically important. A recent study showed that 61% of users are unlikely to return to a website that they had trouble accessing on their phone. Clearly the best experiences on mobile devices happen on websites designed specifically for mobile - follow these best practices to give your patients a great mobile experience.

1. Keep it quick: 
Mobile users are often short on time, squeezing in online tasks as they go about their day. They may also be low on data, depending on their phone contract. To help them, design your site to load fast and make copy easy to scan. Use your desktop site analytics to see what mobile users are doing and prioritise the content that mobile users need most. Reduce large blocks of text and use bullet points for easy reading and compress images to keep them small for faster site loading.

2. Simplify navigation: 
No one likes to be confused. Clear navigation will help your customers find what they need easily. Minimise scrolling and help users navigate between pages with clear 'back' and 'home' buttons. Where possible, aim to use seven navigation links or fewer.



3. Be thumb friendly: 
People use their fingers to operate mobile devices - especially their thumbs. Use large buttons and give them breathing room to reduce accidental clicks, and increase the clickable area of smaller buttons.  


4. Design for visibility: 
A mobile-friendly site needs to get its message across without causing eyestrain. Make it easy for your customers to read - remember, they maybe be in a place with low light. Create contrast between background and text and make sure content fits on screen, and can be read without the need to zoom. 



5. Make it accessible: 
Ideally, your mobile site should work across all mobile devices and all handset orientations. Find alternatives to Flash - it does not work on some devices, eg iPads and iPhones. Adapt your site for both vertical and horizontal orientations - keeping users in the same place when they change orientation.

6. Make it easy to convert: 
No matter what your site’s objective is, your customers need to be able to do it with a virtual keyboard and no mouse. Making it easy for someone to contact you is critical. Keep forms short using the fewest number of fields possible and use click-to‐call functionality for all phone numbers.

7. Make it local
: Consumers look for local information on their phones all the time - from finding the nearest cinema, to locating a dentist. Include functionality that helps people find and get to you. Have your address on the landing page and include maps and directions.