CDG Interactive Blog

Worldwide, mobile now accounts for 10.01% of total web traffic. In the US, more than 120 million people now own a smartphone, and 48 million people own a tablet.  Half of all local searches are currently performed on mobile devices.

Clearly, you've got to make sure that your site is ready to welcome traffic from mobile devices, and to provide those visitors with a great user experience.

Even if you're not ready to completely overhaul your site, there are several quick and easy steps you can take to vastly improve the mobile experience.

Here 5 fixes you can implement right now to ensure your mobile visitors stay on your site:

1. Control Pop-Ups: Either eliminate pop-ups for mobile users or ensure they are resized to not be larger than the screen.  Visitors will spend little time scrolling around looking for a way to close the window. If you must use a pop-up for some reason, be sure to watch your bounce rate for mobile visitors in your web analytics to ensure you’re not losing visitors.
2. Push Your Buttons:Test the target areas of buttons and links for touching with fingers. Most websites were designed and built for clicking with the more precise mouse which allows for items to be placed in close proximity. At the very least, ensure that your purchase and cancel target areas don’t overlap and can be touched separately.
3. Select the Right Keyboard: In any situation that requires user input, make sure your site serves up the correct keyboard to match the input you/re requesting from users – using the options for email, URL, telephone numbers and numbers will help your mobile visitors provide the correct information with fewer typos, resulting in fewer errors and less frustration.
4. Turn Off Auto-Correct: Disable the auto-correct function for form entry. Nothing is more frustrating for a visitor than having to re-input information because the device “knows” better.  Depending on the form fields, you may also choose to turn off auto-complete and auto-capitalize.
5. Never Think You're Finished: Okay, this isn't exactly a quick fix, but it's important. Between new products and user expectations, mobile standards are constantly evolving, so you can't simply "fix it and forget it." You need to keep vigilant and continually evaluate whether your site is still performing optimally, and whether you can improve it. (That goes for us too! At CDG, we regularly revisit and improve previous work.)