How to Make Mobile-friendly Website on WordPress 

Back in 2016, mobile web usage overtook desktop usage and has continued to grow since then. As of July 2024, StatCounter GlobalStats reports that mobile devices dominate with a 61.79% market share, compared to 36.04% for desktops and 2.17% for tablets.

This indicates that, depending on your business’s niche, more than half of visitors access your website via mobile devices. Therefore, as a website owner, it’s crucial to ensure your WordPress site performs well on all devices, especially mobile phones.

Without a mobile-friendly site, mobile users may not find, visit, or engage with your website. Fortunately, platforms like WordPress.com simplify this process, as all WordPress themes, even the free ones, are mobile-friendly.

This article will explore different methods on how to make mobile friendly website on WordPress and why it’s critical for your business. But first, let’s distinguish between mobile-friendly and mobile-responsive designs.

Mobile-friendly design vs. mobile responsive design

Mobile-friendly design

A mobile-friendly website is designed to work the same way across different devices, ensuring it is accessible and usable on mobile devices. However, it does not adapt to different screen sizes. The main characteristics of a mobile-friendly website include:

Simplified navigation: The site is designed with a layout that is easy to navigate on smaller screens.

Readable text: Fonts are chosen to be legible on mobile screens without the need to zoom in.

Static layout: The design remains the same across all devices, sometimes leading to a less-than-optimal experience on small or large screens.

Mobile-responsive design

A mobile-responsive website goes a step further by adapting its layout and content based on the device’s screen size. This ensures an optimal viewing experience, whether the user is on a smartphone, tablet, or desktop. Key features of a mobile-responsive website include:

Fluid grids: The layout is based on a flexible grid system that adjusts to different screen sizes.

Flexible images: Images resize and adjust within the flexible grid to fit the screen appropriately.

CSS media queries: These queries detect the device’s screen size and apply specific styling rules to ensure the best possible layout.

Why are mobile-friendly sites important

More people now access websites using mobile devices rather than traditional desktop computers. Having a mobile-friendly design is crucial when creating websites to provide a smooth user experience.

Besides enhancing user experience, mobile-friendly websites are also vital for SEO. Starting in 2015, Google significantly updated its search algorithm to prioritize “mobile-friendly” websites. This change was driven by one critical factor: the mobile responsiveness of your website.

Therefore, if your website is easily readable on mobile devices, it will achieve higher search engine rankings than those that are not.

By investing in a mobile-friendly website design, not only will your SERP (Search Engine Result Pages) rank improve, but you will also gain better visibility and increased user engagement.

Conversely, if your website does not display well on smaller screens, it can negatively impact your traffic.

How to test WordPress website for mobile friendliness

While your website might look fantastic on a single mobile phone (like your personal smartphone), testing it across various screen sizes is essential to ensure it’s truly responsive. However, testing your website on numerous devices can consume a lot of time, even with a collection of old phones.

To streamline this, many free and paid mobile-friendly testing tools are available online that evaluate whether your WordPress site meets mobile-friendly criteria. One such free mobile-friendly tool is SEOmator.

Simply enter your site’s URL to receive a quick assessment of its mobile design. If your site is fully optimized for mobile devices, you’ll receive a cheerful success message. However, if the results indicate issues, you need to do some work.

How to make mobile friendly website WordPress

Use responsive design

Responsive design is the concept of taking a website and structuring it so that it changes to fit different screen sizes. A website built using responsive design principles can work on the largest billboard as well as the smallest cell phone. The key to embracing responsive design is to make it an integral part of your website.

Responsive design works by finding the size of your browser screen just before the page loads. Your browser stores this information so that it can better manage pages.

Once the screen size is found, your website reacts to the size by adjusting segments of the page to better fit different-sized pages. On a cell phone, this would probably include aligning everything into one column and removing things that are not important. Responsive menus often change shape, too.

To integrate responsive design into your website, start by selecting a platform that supports responsive web design.

If you opt for WordPress.com, you can choose from over 100 attractive themes that let you customize the appearance of your site. These templates are versatile and cover a wide range of industries, including education, real estate, advertising, and more.

All WordPress themes are inherently responsive, guaranteeing that your site will perform well on mobile devices, tablets, and desktop devices, regardless of the theme you select. If you prefer to keep your existing theme, consider hiring a developer to update it.

Optimize everything

One of the biggest problems people need help with when trying to make or access a mobile website is that many resources take up a lot of bandwidth and other resources to send.

Mobile devices often have limited data to work with, so larger resources are a problem. You can find ways to optimize many of your website’s resources.

Optimize images

Images can be very large files. Still, you can optimize them for mobile use using plugins and free online platforms.

Plugins like TinyPNG try to remove as much data from an image file as possible without affecting the quality of the picture. That way, each picture has a minimal footprint.

WordPress also has a built-in feature that helps with this. When it detects that the website is open on a mobile device, it uses the smallest version of the image available.

So, if you are unsure about optimizing images, then save a small version of each image on your website, as well.

Optimize code

This step may be a bit advanced for most people, but it is still worth looking at. If you have a lot of plugins and other added files to your website, consider finding ways of optimizing the code of your site. Many tools have a way of doing this internally and automatically.

However, adding additional resources to your website can let files through without being optimized first.

Check your files to make sure everything is as compressed and ready as possible. This should take fewer resources and perform faster on a mobile device.

Use mobile-optimized plugins

Plugins enhance the functionality of your WordPress site, and while they may not always contribute visual elements to the front-end, some do, such as widgets or CTA buttons. Ensure these elements scale well across all screen sizes, or at least provide the option to disable them on smaller screens.

For instance, a sidebar widget is a great feature for a desktop site, but if it overwhelms the mobile design or fails to scale down, it can negatively impact the user experience.

Similar to WordPress themes, pay close attention to a plugin’s features. Read reviews or check out demos before making a purchase. Whenever you activate a new plugin, perform a quick quality check of your site to confirm it scales correctly across different screen sizes.

Combining a responsive theme with mobile-friendly plugins will enable your site to display effectively on smaller screens.

Limit pop-ups

If your website uses pop-ups, find a way to limit them or just remove them on mobile devices. Pop-ups are difficult to handle on mobile devices and can drive away customers.

But if they are important for your business, avoid using full-screen pop-ups on mobile, as they can be disruptive. Your mobile users have limited space on mobile devices, and trying to navigate around pop-ups that take up more space can be difficult.

For instance, a full-screen pop-up may interfere with the reading experience of a mobile user engaged with your content. So, if your pop-up plugin has an “off” setting for mobile devices, use it.

Refine details

Another thing you should consider is refining the details of your website. Many people don’t realize that some choices for their desktop site just don’t work well on mobile sites.

For example, the size and type of font you use on the website matters. If you use huge fonts and headers, they won’t work well on a smaller screen. Look at ways of adjusting your fonts and other small details so that they can work anywhere.

Also, ensure that descriptive titles, metadata, and structured data are uniform across your site’s desktop and mobile versions. Google advises using consistent text, file names, captions, and engaging alt text for mobile and desktop versions.

If your mobile site has less content than your desktop version, you might see a decrease in traffic.

So, don’t remove any content, even if your desktop site contains extensive content that’s difficult to fit on a mobile screen. Instead, use features like accordions, drop-down menus, or tabs to make content more accessible on mobile devices.

Test your site thoroughly to ensure these features work as intended. Using a mobile-friendly website tester can help confirm that your site remains responsive across all devices.

Use mobile versions

If incorporating a responsive design theme or updating your old theme isn’t feasible, there is another option. Plugins can create mobile versions of your website.

For instance, Jetpack, one of the well-known WordPress plugins, can convert your website into a mobile-friendly template.

Your website will continue to function the same on larger devices. When a user visits your website on a mobile device, the mobile version is displayed instead of the full desktop version.

This approach works similarly to responsive design but involves predefined dimensions, switching between the mobile and desktop versions.

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is another option developed by Google to speed up page loading on mobile devices by reducing the amount of data required. Websites with the AMP label can be seen in Google mobile searches.

One of AMP’s major benefits for WordPress is its streamlined code, which makes AMP pages exceptionally fast and responsive. Setting up AMP for WordPress is straightforward with the Official AMP plugin, supported by contributors like Google, Automattic, and XWP.

Simply install and activate the plugin, and Google will deliver AMP content to mobile users. For more control over your AMP content, you might consider the AMP for WP plugin.

It offers additional styling options, ad integration, and social sharing buttons, enhancing the functionality beyond the official AMP plugin.

When using AMP, keep in mind these two SEO considerations:

• The AMP plugin applies rel=”canonical” tags to your AMP content, preventing any duplicate content issues.
• Yoast SEO integrates well with the Official AMP Plugin, simplifying SEO management.

Use touch controls wisely

Make sure your website is easy to use on mobile devices. Use touch controls that work well and are easy to find and use. Make sure buttons and other controls are the right size and spaced well for mobile devices.

For example, if you have navigation menus, make sure they are easy to find and use on a mobile device.

On mobile devices, menus are often hidden behind the hamburger icon, and the menu options become buttons. Treat these options as buttons rather than just text, to make them easier to use on mobile devices without needing additional changes for desktop use.

Avoid using Flash

Incorporating Flash on your website can slow down your site’s performance, negatively affecting both SEO and user experience. It can also increase page load times and is incompatible with mobile devices. Opting for HTML5 and CSS instead will make your website more responsive and mobile-friendly.

Focus on site performance

Page speed has long been a critical factor in Google’s ranking algorithms for desktop searches, and as of July 2018, it now impacts mobile rankings as well. Given that over 61.95% of internet searches are conducted on mobile devices, optimizing your site’s performance across all devices is more crucial than ever.

Images significantly affect performance, but your code and WordPress host are also important.

For your code, consider techniques like minification, especially if you’re using a custom theme. Review all installed plugins, deactivating and uninstalling those that are no longer needed. Keeping your site’s elements organized will enhance its performance.

Regarding WordPress hosting, choose a high-quality web hosting provider that offers caching technology and CDN services. If you’re hosting with Bluehost, you’ll benefit from these performance-boosting features.

Test customizations carefully

Website builders often come with built-in responsive themes and features. However, these pre-designed themes might not always meet the specific needs of business owners, particularly if you require advanced customizations. Adding custom elements to your site can sometimes lead to unforeseen issues.

For instance, if you incorporate CSS elements to highlight key text, it might not render as intended on mobile devices, affecting the user experience across different screen sizes.

When using the default WordPress.com Customizer, any changes you make will automatically apply to all mobile devices, ensuring that your site’s design remains consistent.

With a WordPress.com plan that supports plugins, you can integrate custom elements, CSS, and third-party plugins. It’s crucial to rigorously test these customization options to ensure they are fully compatible with mobile devices.

Likewise, before installing any new theme or plugin, confirm that they are designed to be responsive. This will prevent issues where your site appears unresponsive despite using a responsive theme.

Additionally, employing CSS media queries and breakpoints allows you to apply different styles based on factors like browser width or device type. This means your site will adjust automatically to fit various screen sizes.

Conclusion: Mobile-friendly WordPress site

Making your website mobile-friendly can be quick and easy. In fact, many hosting platforms, like Bluehost’s WordPress hosting options, have a system to help you make your website mobile-friendly. Check with your hosting provider to see if there is an easy way to make your website work on any device already built in.

FAQs about mobile-friendly WordPress sites