Your website might be mobile responsive. But is your content great on mobile?

Small changes can impact the user’s experience when your site is displayed on a mobile screen instead of a desktop.

A few easy strategies could optimize your content and enhance your visitor’s experience.

Implement Accelerated Mobile Pages

Load-time is vital for reducing bounce rates.

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) could minimize load times. Google has implemented AMP to upgrade the user experience on mobile devices.

On the technical side, AMP involves a markup in the coding that improves loading times for websites accessed on mobile devices and so it works only on mobile, not desktop.

However, it’s only for websites accessed through Google’s search engine, not other search engines.

If you are considering updating your website content to AMP, make sure you are aware of the limitations that may impede the way you currently operate campaigns and reporting.

Optimize font and button sizes

Check your font size is at least 14px.

While this might sound larger than you’d expect, 14px is a good size for saving visitors from having to zoom in for readability.

Make sure your buttons are also large enough so readers aren’t hitting the wrong ones. At least 44px by 44px could be a good general rule of thumb.

Leave out pop-ups and refreshes

Ensuring the content experience doesn’t rely on pop-ups and refreshes is important.

Pop-ups tend to be inaccessible or unworkable on mobile, while page refreshes can be annoying for readers on a mobile device.

For some websites out there, this isn’t new news given Google rolled out this penalty back in January 2017.

It’s a good reminder to check legacy tracking and scripts set up on your site that might be generating pop-ups or similar interstitials.

Facilitate easy navigation

Set up your content so visitors don’t have to enter texts to navigate — make full use of your website.

Use buttons, lists, checklists, drop-down menus and image selections instead of text for user interactions.

At the same time, experiment with navigation placement to support the user experience.

Use simple website layouts

Avoid having too many separate columns, sections, frames and tables to your website layout.

Purge unnecessary content and apply the minimalist approach.

Additionally, break long pages of copy into bite-sized chunks by separating text into different pages, ensuring all content is dynamic.

This means visitors won’t have to continuously scroll down to read content.

Don’t apply the F-shape principle

Mobile visitors don’t conform to the golden-triangle or F-shaped reading patterns associated with desktop devices.

Instead, they have a distributed reading pattern.

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The visitor still looks to the left but his or her gaze is distributed. This means there’s no focal point to optimize.

Offer a bite, snack, and meal

Your content should be read and received well, and you can achieve this with the bite, snack and meal strategy.

With an engaging headline, you offer the reader a bite.

A summary or succinct opening section at the start gives the visitor a tasty snack.

Finally, if they’re ready for the meal they scroll down to the full post.

Make content snackable, concise and snappy

The full post should be made up of chunks of content.

These equally snackable chunks should be easy to consume in the “white space” time during the day.

Your visitors might be waiting for the train while wanting to find some simple budgeting tips, or reading up on symptoms and disorders while yawning at the doctor’s, so a two-minute read is appropriate for their level of attention and focus.

So, then, how do you make content snackable and engaging?

Use short paragraphs, and incorporate subheadings, images, lists and bullet points, and font styling like italics and bold to make the structure obvious at a glance.

Try to avoid long walls of text and use small words, simple phrases and images to break up paragraphs.

Use images, videos, and infographics

Follow an image with your most valuable information. The visitor’s eyes tend to notice images first.

Then, try breaking up text with images every 300 to 400 words.

You could also opt for white spaces to guide your readers to the most important points in your copy.

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Varying your content format could also engage mobile readers, who are more likely to be visiting in “white space” time, so use videos, interactive tools, infographics and other types of content.

Incorporate short headlines

Aim for headlines of about six words. Short headlines don’t get truncated on smartphones.

We tend to skim headlines by reading the first and last three words. Short headlines ensure they are read.

Everything you do with your website needs to be designed mobile first top of mind!

Your mobile-friendly website should load quickly and be easy to navigate without visitors needing to enter text.

Additionally, you can engage mobile visitors with the bite, snack and meal approach.

By ensuring your content is snackable and by incorporating varying content types, you could attract and retain more traffic.

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Image Credits: stokkete

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