Mobile Website Design Best Practices 2015

People reading this article already know it is important that websites and website pages display properly on phones and tablets.  There are different degrees of being mobile friendly.

• Have you noticed that when viewing websites on your phone some website pages stay nice and centered and are easy to scroll up and down and other pages tend to move from side to side and do not stay centered automatically?  Part of building a responsive web page is making it display on phones with screens averaging 300 pixels wide.  So step one is to make pages display in the proper width when people visit on a phone.  The second step is control the pages so they automatically center themselves.  Reading a webpage is much more enjoyable when the page automatically centers its self.
• Images are an important part of making web pages interesting to visitors.  It is important to ensure that images display properly on phones.
• One touch dial is important.  If you include a phone number on a page, it may as well have one touch dial functionality enabled.
• Have you ever tried to fill out a request for quote form on a phone.  It is rather inconsiderate to add a from to a website and then add  capcha text to the form so the form cannot be submitted via phone.  Or what if the form fields do not display properly on phones, or go off the right side?  It is important to consider how request for quote forms render on phones and tablets if you want people to contact you via form.
• Do customers need to find your location?  It is convenient for people to find your website and click the map for directions and have turn by turn directions start on their phone.
• Have you visited a site that tries to get you to download a PDF form on your phone?  People know that most phones cannot view PDF files.
• Of course Flash has not worked on phones.  If you have elements that run using  Adobe Flash, be aware that it won’t work on phones.  Sometimes people use image slider programs, slideshows and video players  without realizing they are actually built using Flash.  It is important to view your website on phones, tablets and PCs to verify that they display as intended.   In addition to risks of hacking, flash does not work on phones.   Also, Mozilla Firefox, a popular web browser for PCs and Macs also blocks Flash as a default because of security risks.  So, if you have a site built in Flash or a site which contains flash elements, it is time for a rethink.

This article is about mobile website best practices but it could be titled What Functionality Your Customers Expect from your website.  After all, when you visit a site on your phone, and maybe while in your car,  don’t you just expect websites to include these functionalities?  If you expect other companies websites to work on all devices, then of course your website should display properly on all devices also.