8 Quick Tips to Optimize WordPress Website for Mobile Users – Mobile Friendly Website

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Learn how to optimize a WordPress website for mobile users. Did you know that Google recommends mobile optimization of blogs to rank higher? In this post, I am going to share easy ways to make a mobile-friendly website.

Did you know that more than half of all internet traffic generated in Aug-2017 comes from mobile devices?

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Mobile internet (websites, web apps, etc.) is where most people consume the content, and if your site isn’t up to par, you could be losing out on a lot of business.

In fact, Google has recently implemented a new policy that will actively deter such websites in search engine rankings, which don’t have a mobile-optimized version of their content.

You can avoid that happening on your site and can optimize the WordPress website for mobile users by following these seven quick tips.

Optimize WordPress Website for Mobile Users
Optimize WordPress Website for Mobile Users

Tips to Optimize WordPress Website for Mobile Users

The following tips will help you convert and make a mobile-friendly website/blog.

#1 Use A Responsive WordPress Theme

Use A Responsive WordPress Theme to make a mobile-friendly blog/website
Use A Responsive WordPress Theme

The very first step to make a mobile-friendly website is to use a responsive theme.

Your website may look great on a desktop. But if you’re not using a responsive theme that is capable of adapting the content to multiple screen sizes, then you’re missing out on a large chunk of mobile users and hence the business as well.

With a responsive mobile-optimized theme, there’s no need to run a custom mobile site alongside your traditional desktop site. As the responsive theme manages to show the content in an eye-catching manner regardless of the screen size.

Most of the modern WordPress themes available in the theme directory on an official WordPress website are mobile-optimized WordPress themes, that support responsive design.

Best Mobile optimized WordPress Themes

Well, if you are really serious about mobile-optimized WordPress themes, I would suggest you buy a paid theme. The following are the best WordPress themes for mobile-optimization.

You should consider buying a paid theme to optimize your WordPress website for mobile users. These are few paid WordPress themes which I usually recommend

If you are using a custom theme that you don’t want to abandon, consider hiring a designer. Who can help turn your static design template into a theme that features responsive design?

Is your website truly responsive? You should check your website on this free tool called Responsive Website Design Testing Tool.

#2 Enable Google Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) in WordPress

PageSpeed (of web pages) has become a factor of Google’s search algorithm for quite a time. Also, Google always advocates flawless user experience whether for the computer or mobile users.

And for the same reason, they introduced Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) which aims to load web pages faster on mobile devices and make a mobile-friendly website.

Since PageSpeed is a search ranking factor and AMP makes web pages faster for mobile devices. Hence, it is correct to say that AMP helps your website gaining SERP ranking.

You can easily set up AMP on your WordPress website using the RIGHT WordPress plugin(s) to optimize your WordPress website for mobile users.

For more details on AMP, you should consider reading the following guide…

Further, you can also optimize the WordPress website for mobile users by Defer Parsing of JavaScript.

#3 Use Plugins for Mobile-Optimized Content

Use Plugins for Mobile-Optimized Content
Use Plugins for Mobile-Optimized Content

If setting up a responsive WordPress theme isn’t an option for you, there are a handful of plugins available on the WordPress plugin repository.

These WordPress Mobile Optimization plugins can help you create a mobile-friendly version of your WordPress site.

The downside to using these mobile optimization WordPress plugins to create a custom mobile site.

Because these plugins have very vanilla designs that can’t be customized as much as a theme with responsive design.

The Best WordPress Mobile Optimization Plugins

These best WordPress plugins for mobile optimization are designed to enhance your WordPress mobile version include:

Another adverse side effect of relying on a WordPress mobile optimization plugin for the mobile-friendly website is that the plugin could stop working during a future WordPress update.

It can happen if the plugin developer does not update the plugin to keep it compatible with new WordPress core files.

WPTouch is by far the most active and popular plugin to optimize the WordPress website for mobile users, and it has been updated as recently as a couple of weeks ago.

However, Any Mobile Theme Switcher and WP Mobile Edition both haven’t received an update in over a year. That’s concerning when you’re trying to stay on top of the most recent design trends.

#4 Use Optimized Images & Load them Correctly

Use Optimized Images & Load them Correctly
Use Optimized Images & Load them Correctly

If your website takes too long to load because you are using several large size images on your website, this may frustrate mobile users.

In fact, Google DoubleClick study indicates more than 53% of users bounce from such websites that load in more than three (3 sec) seconds.

Clearly, half of your audience will never browse your website if your site loads in more than 3 seconds.

Thus this short period of about three seconds that can make or break the first impression of your website for new users.

Therefore, image optimization becomes an important step you can take to make sure your site is speedy for on-the-go users.

WordPress itself takes care of this since version 4.4, as it serves up the smallest possible version of the image available on your server.

For sites that are running WordPress 4.3 or below, this can be a huge incentive to upgrade and see significant speed gains without installing any new plugins.

Therefore, you concerned enough to keep your site (including WordPress, plugins, themes, etc.) updated, since new updates are likely to fix known bugs and vulnerabilities.

If you’re already on the latest version of WordPress and want to make sure that images are well optimized. The Smush Image Compression and Optimization plugin you should consider to optimize your images for mobile users.

If you prefer not to add anything new, consider using a service like TinyPNG to shrink your image sizes before you upload them to your server.

Steps to optimize Images in WordPress

Consider lazy loading of images to further optimization

#5 Avoid Use of Full Screen Pop-Ups

Avoid Use of Full Screen Pop-Ups to make a mobile-friendly website
Avoid Use of Full-Screen Pop-Ups

The next tip on this list to make a mobile-friendly website/blog is to stop using full-screen pop-ups.

Full-screen pop-ups that contain a call to action for your website can be a great way to engage users on desktop. But these pop-ups may be annoying for mobile users.

There can be one major reason for this is that if these full-screen pops are not designed for mobile browsers and in many cases they are not. This can lead to a frustrating experience for your customer.

If you have to use these pop-ups for your content on a desktop, consider adding some CSS or JavaScript code. That will identify the user’s browser type and avoid showing these pop-ups to those who are browsing on a mobile device.

Hiding these pop-ups on mobile devices may cut down on user frustration and optimize website user experience for mobile visitors. Use mobile-friendly WordPress plugins for pop-ups and other email-options or CTAs.

#6 Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test Tool

Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool comes really handy when you want to know whether your WordPress website is mobile users friendly. Or what areas required your attention to make your WordPress mobile-friendly.

The popular search engines are cracking down on sites that aren’t mobile-optimized. So getting it straight from the horse’s mouth can help you assess the areas of your website that need improvement.

You should check your site on Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test Tool to optimize your WordPress website for mobile users.

The tool will highlight the sections of your site that took too long to load. So you can quickly identify problem areas in your website’s performance.

#7 Make Sure Your Web Host Is Reliable

All of the mobile optimizations you can do for your site ultimately mean nothing if you’ve chosen an unreliable web host.

You should steer clear of shared hosting plans if you’re running a dedicated website since someone else experiencing a colossal traffic spike has the potential to knock your site offline as well.

Dedicated servers or new-age cloud hosting like Kinsta are more expensive but give you more control over your website’s speed and performance. 

Because you’re not sharing server hardware with anyone else on the rack. You don’t have to worry about someone’s Groupon deal going viral and imploding your website along with it.

If you’re curious about the differences between shared hosting and dedicated hosting, ask your hosting provider which you’re using to see how easy it would be to switch.

Also, you can read web hosting reviews like this to select a reliable web hosting. Your host should also support caching content, so even if your website is down the information is still accessible.

Page caching can significantly reduce your site load speeds for returning mobile users. It is one of the best ways to keep your visitor interested in your site in the first place.

#8 How to Increase WordPress Website Speed In Mobile

Increase WordPress Mobile Site Speed
Increase WordPress Mobile Site Speed

Users often ask me, how to increase WordPress website speed in mobile. There are a lot of ways that you can use to optimize the WordPress site speed for mobile.

Here I am sharing a couple of resources you will find useful in order to increase your mobile site speed.

I have considered that you already have A Mobile-Optimized WordPress Theme like WPAstra and A Good hosting provider like SiteGround. Read our reviews,

Final Thoughts

These seven tips and tricks to Optimize WordPress Website for Mobile Users should help you get on the road.

But you shouldn’t stop by just updating your theme or installing a mobilizer plugin.

It recommended that you should always monitor your site’s performance on both mobile and desktop. This will help you to know exactly the user experience your visitors are getting. And accordingly, you can keep on tweaking your site for better user experience and performance. Your goal should be to keep your website mobile-friendly.

This article is written by Craig, one of our Guest Authors.
In addition to being the editor at Designrfix.com and writing about tech, web, and graphic design among other subjects, I love “unplug” and be outdoors hiking and enjoying nature. If you can’t reach me, it’s probably because where I am at doesn’t have cell phone reception.

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16 thoughts on “8 Quick Tips to Optimize WordPress Website for Mobile Users – Mobile Friendly Website”

  1. Avatar of طراحی سایت در کانادا

    Thanks for awesome article for WordPress

    Reply
  2. Avatar of Medona Steve

    Any mobile specific theme recommendation?
    Thanks in advance.

    Reply
  3. Avatar of Tania

    your blog website optimize for mobile users is very informative. for me, it is very renewable.

    Reply
  4. Avatar of Tammyane

    Thank you for theses tips. I was wondering if any mobile theme, or AMP i should use for more optimization.

    Reply
  5. Avatar of Shubham Saha

    Hey thank for the article,
    I was looking to improve the interface of the mobile version of my website and thanks to your article, now i know where to begin with.

    Reply
  6. Avatar of Emma Zack

    You have really helped me to optimize my site for mobile. My Google PageSpeed score has been increased, more than 90.

    Reply
  7. Avatar of Priyanka

    Hello,

    Thanks for sharing 7 Quick Tips to Optimize WordPress Website for Mobile Users…It really helpful to me…I follow your steps for better results. Thanks for sharing valuable information with us…

    Reply
  8. Avatar of mohd jabir

    superb article for wordpress and provide very helpful information thank you

    Reply
  9. Avatar of آموزش اتوکد

    Hi
    Thanks for this helpful article. I am going to implement it on my blog.

    Reply
  10. Avatar of aider

    Hi,
    Great article
    Thanks for sharing information about wordpress, keep post

    Reply
  11. Avatar of Tilak Ahuja

    Good content, good post. All is useful.

    Reply
  12. Avatar of Mat

    Great advice. Will try those tips and report back.

    Reply
  13. Avatar of Hitesh

    Superb Article. Will surely implement it.

    Reply
  14. Avatar of Rajesh Singh

    All info written perfectly I appreciate it. Please keep writing like this and update us. Thanks!

    Reply
  15. Avatar of Lori

    Most visitors are from mobile devices so it is absolutely essential to optimize for the mobile. Thank you so much for providing these tips. This is a very informative post.

    Reply

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