It’s 2013 already and for those running a business, have you checked if your website is mobile-friendly? If you haven’t done so, it’s time to do it now.

With a rapidly growing number of people turning to the smartphones and tablets these days, you need to keep abreast with technology and making your website mobile-friendly is the way to go. You may think that just because you have a website, it will automatically display correctly on iPhones and tablets. But the truth is, there’s a big difference.

Keep in mind that these portable and handheld gadgets have a smaller screen size and what you see on your regular desktop or laptop computer screen will naturally be smaller when viewed on tablets and smartphones.

In terms of tablets alone, there are now 70 million users in the U.S. Traffic to e-commerce sites from this device also went up by 348 percent for one year alone, from 2011 to 2012.

Useful Tips

If you’d like your business to succeed this year, you definitely need to ensure its tappiness. By tappiness, this means a website uses space smartly on a tablet or mobile device. The text is bigger and easy to read and the touch points are large enough as well for easy navigation by visitors and your regular customers.

Some areas of your site or specifically, the CSS, needs to be adjusted to create a user-friendly experience. The margins for buttons and calls-to-action have to be increased in size to 45-57 pixels to properly accommodate an index finger when it taps on a button.

Links should be easily tapped so use a different color from your main text if possible. You may also use underlines to show that they’re links.

Font size and spacing should be increased as well as the padding around menu items. The padding can be upped to 5-10 pixels depending on what your design allows.

Put more margins on pages and content blocks as well for easy reading.

For online forms, be sure to increase the fields for fast tapping and for convenience when entering information.

There you go. Do your adjustments soonest and you’re on your way to reaping business success.

Photo via mivamerchant.com

Originally posted on January 9, 2013 @ 3:17 am