Just because you can see your website on a mobile phone doesn’t mean it’s mobile-friendly. Being mobile-friendly is about much more than fitting your website onto a smaller screen…
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.
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 data package. To help them, design your site to load fast and make copy easy to scan. Prioritise the content that mobile users need most – use your desktop site analytics to see what mobile users are doing. 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 easily find what they need. 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, pad smaller buttons to increase the clickable area.
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 onscreen, 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 e.g. 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. Make it easy to for someone to contact you! 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 info 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.
Put your website to the test with the latest “GoMo” innovative from Google – visit www.howtogomo.com to see exactly how your site looks to mobile browsers.
Need help? Dental Design is leading the way in mobile marketing within the dental profession, call us today on 01202 677 277.