Ensuring your content looks good and is easy to read, use and navigate on a small screen is not as simple as modifying font size. From how content appears and responds to graphic load times, color contrast and navigation there is a lot to consider. Remember the goal with mobile site design is to make information easy to consume. With that in mind, here are a few tips for building a mobile-friendly asset management website:

1. Use responsive design. This means that your website will automatically adjust to fit the screen size of whatever device it's being viewed on. Don’t forget, Google Analytics can tell you the device type your visitors are using allowing you to optimize for that screen size in the design.‍

2. Keep it simple. Mobile users won’t scroll through a lot of text or images to find what they're looking for. It is better to have less content that is easy to find and consume than lots of content no one pays attention to. Unsure of what simple means? Ask yourself:

• Can you get to where you need to in 2-3 clicks? Anything more and you will lose your audience. No one has time to click that much on a mobile device.
• Is there a clear way for people to get to the essential information on your site? Establish an intuitive and straight forward path to the most important action or information.
• Is the content visually overwhelming? Limit the number of font sizes, typefaces, and colors. Use these only to highlight important messages and features and maintain a strict hierarchy of information. The same is true for animations, visual effects, and imagery. You don’t want to overwhelm visitors or slow down the site.

3. Use large, easy-to-read fonts. Mobile users don't want to have to zoom in to read your content. The minimum font size is typically 16px, but that can vary slightly based on the font.

4. Make it easy to click & type: Ensure your buttons and links are easy/big enough to click and standout from a design perspective. Touch screens are less reliable than a mouse and/or keyboard in registering a click, so size matters on mobile. For text entry -- less is more. When you are typing with your thumb while holding a coffee and walking across the street you don’t want to input your entire email address. Limiting form field entries to essential information and having autofill and pre-formatted options is helpful to users.

5. Manage the menu: The desktop version of your site likely includes complex header images and multiple menu and submenu options. The smaller screen size of mobile devices demands a different approach. The “hamburger” icon is widely used and the simplest menu option. If you have multiple submenus think about how and where on screen they appear. Most sites will use a slide out submenu, however there are other options depending on the complexity of your site.

6. Think SEO: Your Search Engine Optimization is positively impacted if your site is mobile optimized. For even better user experience, ensuring your site is SEO indexed will allow users on mobile devices to be sent the correct mobile links to use.  

While this may seem like a lot to think about, these are just our top tips! Remember in today’s competitive marketplace with rising consumer expectations seeping into business one of the biggest mistakes you can make is not thinking about mobile-friendly design. A conversation with your IT team and/or creative services agency is a good place to start – good luck!

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