Mobile Optimization Methods and SEO - What are Best Practices?

by Larry Kilroy (Unlicensed)

Oct 01, 2018

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Recent studies show that nearly 50% of visits to eCommerce websites are from mobile devices such as phones and tablets. These visits account for just over 25% of all eCommerce sales.

Building an eCommerce site that contemplates how you will host mobile users is the key to making sure you do not miss out on this growing segment of sales. In addition to putting yourself in the best position to sell your products to customers on the go, optimizing your website for mobile users has an important second benefit. It is an emerging factor to consider for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and will help you rank higher in most search engines as all major searches now consider how your site appears on mobile devices.

Today we will look at the three most popular methods to optimize your eCommerce site for mobile users.

1. Make Your Existing Site Mobile Friendly

   1. Text-based phone numbers, physical addresses, or email addresses that can trigger a call, directions, or email message from your mobile device

   2. Slideshows or image rotators that function without Flash support (Adobe Flash is not supported by Apple and some other mobile devices)

   3. Small image sizes to allow for fast loading over mobile connections—don’t count on even a 3G connection

2. Optimize Your Existing Site For Mobile

   1. Simplified navigation that is “thumb” friendly with large touchpoints, especially for critical contact information

   2. Reduced graphics that don’t interrupt the quest for critical information such as product listings

   3. Avoid making users type unless absolutely necessary

   4. Give users the option to view the desktop version of your site

3. Responsive Design (Google Recommended Best Practice)

   1. Responsive design is a method of developing a site that is completely flexible regardless of device. Rather than detecting a specific browser type or device type, the website automatically orientates itself based on the screen size of the device. A combination of reformatting and re-optimizing the site as a whole give a practical flexibility beyond imagination.

   2. Key Benefits to using Responsive Design

      1. Extremely flexible for the eCommerce merchant

      2. It supports the multi-device user, a user who browses your site on their phone at work and completes their purchase at home on their iPad for example

      3. Responsive sites helps combat a high bounce rate, users tend to stick around and browse mobile experiences that are as rich as their web based counterparts

      4. Increase of sales and conversion rates happen when you meet users on the device of their preference

      5. Improves Search Engine Rankings, mobile and web based user experiences have the same links for search engine bots to catalog

      6. Quicker load time

To learn more about how Bottlenose uses responsive design for all of its products, keep reading...