Four Key Elements That Can Enhance the Layout of Your Mobile Website

Over 70 percent of tablet owners use these devices to make purchases each week, according to Digital Buzz Blog. With the exponential increase of 160 percent in Android tablet sales alone in 2013, it is clear that the demand for websites designed for mobile devices is only going to rise in the years to come. Having an effective mobile site design to represent your brand is now a required necessity instead of an optional decision. Fortunately, there are five key elements that you can have in place in order to create an effective mobile site.

Mobile Website Layout Tips
[Click on the image for full infographic]

#1: Small, High-Quality Images

One of the most important part of your overall web design layout is your company logo. It needs to truly stand out in a way that it captivates the attention of your customers in an appealing way instead of a visually repulsive manner. A general rule of thumb is to make it as appealing as possible without going beyond 2KB in size.

This is primarily because of the fact that large images can take a very long time to load. Your prospective customers don’t want to spend a substantial amount of time waiting around for your page to load. One study even shows that 25 percent of them will leave your standard desktop site all together if your page doesn’t fully load within the first four seconds, according to Savvy Panda. Keep in mind that a mobile website takes much longer to load than standard sites, so you need to make sure that your images don’t prevent your site from loading quickly.

#2: Relevant Content

Even though your design and images may lead your customers toward your website, it is the content that will keep them interested. One of the only reasons why there are so many people who use mobile sites in the first place is because it gives them a direct and convenient connection that can route them toward your content. Therefore, you need to make sure that you maintain the same level of quality and consistency that attracted your consumer to your website in the first place when creating a mobile design layout.

#3: An Effective Footer

When it comes to your mobile website, you need to make sure that you focus on the big picture and the full layout – top to bottom. It can become very easy to get distracted by the title, logo and overall images and content that are featured above the fold of your home page while neglecting and overlooking the footer of the webpage. As the old saying goes, you are easily recognized by the shoes you are wearing instead of your actual outfit. The same principle applies with mobile sites, which is why you need to take the footer (or “shoes”) of your website seriously.

The worst thing that you can do is overload your footer with an abundance of hyperlinks and unnecessary graphics. While this may be acceptable with standard websites that are viewed on 17-20 inch monitor screens, it can become a major setback for mobile consumers who are viewing the same content on a seven or nine-inch screen instead.

#4: Do Not Forget about Coding

In addition to the images and overall content displayed within your mobile website, you need to make sure that you pay close attention to the coding that is hard at work behind the scenes of your site. When it comes to developing mobile sites, this is definitely one of the biggest setbacks and most overlooked aspects of the overall layout. It can become very distracting to focus too much on your images and content that you forget about the code that keeps everything running.

Make sure that you utilize proper code that is completely valid. Use fluid layouts in order to ensure that the screen size of your website automatically adapts to the size limitations of the mobile devices that is accessing it. Use specific styles sheets to target a variety of different mobile devices that are efficient and user-friendly. Stay away from fancy scripts that can only complicate things further, because you will leave your website openly exposed and vulnerable to technical glitches by doing so.

The Bottom Line

Simplicity is an essential factor that has to be taken into consideration when you are developing your mobile website. Keep in mind that if your consumers wanted to spend a considerable amount of time researching your content and exploring each individual page, they would have more than likely used their desktop or laptop computers instead. They want to be able to quickly access your site, get all of the information that they need in a relatively short period and finalize the sale. Focusing on increasing the efficiency and quality of your website layout will achieve this goal.

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