Aren’t you getting a feeling that mobile devices are steadily displacing desktop from our daily lives? Indeed, 69% of the Internet traffic belongs to smartphone users. It’s highly understandable - portable devices with Internet access available almost everywhere empower us to do many things on-the-go. Now in 63% of online shopping cases a purchase is completed right via the portable device. So investing into creating a mobile-friendly site is highly important for e-commerce companies and startups these days.
How to Make a Squarespace Website Mobile Friendly
Any website created on Squarespace is automatically adapted to appear nice on mobile devices. Yet any improvements and customizations you add, for example any media files of a large size, plenty of various content on a page, changing letter spacing - all of it can lead to problems with website loading and look on phones. This article includes some of the common best practices for making and keeping a Squarespace site mobile-friendly.
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Check The Mobile Compatibility Of Your Website
If you want to test how your Squarespace website looks on mobile, the simplest way is to open it on a smartphone or tablet. You can also implement device preview in the admin board to see how it looks on smaller screens.
You can also use Mobile-Friendly Test from Google to get a prompt evaluation of your website. In case this test finds the lack of site’s compatibility or any issues with its mobile version, look through the following tips.
- Make your website’s pages weigh less than 5 MB
Each time a user loads any web page, his or her device downloads all the content it has. Cellular phones usually have simpler hard- and software installed and mostly use cellular networks for accessing the internet. This means that sending requests to large data volumes may overwhelm their system. In order to avoid such issues you should try to reduce the amount of content each page of your site has on it.
- The letter spacing must be higher than 0px
When you set the font’s spacing at less than 0px, it may lead to the letters overlapping on a mobile device, which definitely doesn't look nice.
In the newer Squarespace version 7.1 you can find this setting on the Fonts panel of your admin board, under the Global text styles menu section. Click the needed font format and check whether the Letter spacing setting shows 0px or higher.
If you are using Squarespace version 7.0 go to the styles panel of your website and make sure your Letter spacing is 0px or higher for all the fonts you are using.
- Try avoiding spacer blocks
Spacer block is a tool used to add some empty space to a page where needed. These create a minimalist look when loading a site on a computer. However on mobile devices such Squarespace blocks are hidden by default and this can affect how your site layout looks on a smartphone in unexpected ways. Think of adjusting the padding to change the template and add more white space instead of implementing too many spacer blocks.
- Use Squarespace AMP option for blog
If your Squarespace website is used for blogging or if you have a blog section, make sure to turn on the Accelerated Mobile Pages function in admin board to improve the loading speed of these pages.
- Enable the mobile styles
Almost all Squarespace templates display its content on mobile devices in a special nicely stacked layout so viewers can easily scroll through your website. If mobile styles are disabled for your website, it’s pretty uncomfortable for visitors to navigate your site.
To make sure these styles are activated, go to the Home menu, then click Design, then choose Template settings. The Disable mobile styles box must be unchecked.
Why Mobile Friendly Websites Are Important
Building a device-friendly site is crucial these days. According to statistical data, 69% of the world’s Internet traffic comes from mobile users and 63% of people shopping online would rather complete their purchase right via the mobile website instead of switching to the desktop. No wonder that a mobile-friendly website is fundamental for growing your local or worldwide businesses. It also improves the following key points of website performance:
- SEO Indicator
All website owners are aware of ranking signals' importance. Website loading speed matters if we talk about Search Engine Optimization and having a mobile-friendly site helps a lot in boosting your site’s positive ranking. But you can hope for higher positioning in the search results only if your site is optimized for portable devices and can boast a responsive design.
- User Experience
Positive user experience must not be underestimated. According to the 2019 survey, if a user’s first impression was negative or there appeared some drawbacks in the website's functionality, a user is likely to avoid returning to this site for at least 6 months. Thus, consider investing in a responsive mobile-friendly user interface elements that automatically adapt to the mobile screen, like Squarespace Google reviews plugin.
- Loading Speed
You’ve made your Squarespace website mobile-optimized, but what time does it take to load? If a user has to wait more than 3 seconds for a page to load, then you are very likely to lose many potential website visitors. This means you need to upgrade your website's mobile version by reducing the weight of its pages.
How To Check If Your Website Is Mobile Friendly
If you want to be certain about the performance of your ecommerce site, you can test a site’s mobile operability with the help of the Google Search Console (previously called Google Webmaster Tools). See the steps you should take:
- Select Property
- Then go to Search Traffic
- Choose Mobile Usability
Next step is to check your site’s structured markup. It should be equivalent across desktop and mobile versions. Use Google’s Structured Data Testing tool for this. If there are no errors and warnings there, the next step is to proceed to a SEO keyword analysis to find out targeted, high-value keywords. Their further implementation should include managing your Squarespace content on mobile, tablet, and desktop versions with following click-throughs.
How Important Is Mobile Friendly For Seo
SEO optimization of your Squarespace mobile version makes it easily accessible for smartphone users. This way, they will get the best impression of your website. Nowadays, it is a well-known fact that our world is getting more and more mobile-oriented. And if you don’t want to lose a large customer base then you absolutely must invest some time and money in your website and provide your users with increasingly valuable content for mobile users.
The Google company regularly offers some recommendations regarding the search optimization for websites in which they mention that only mobile-friendly sites will receive better ranking than non-mobile-friendly. So if you aim to improve your rankings on google and get high-income profits then you have to ensure your device users get a good surfing experience.
Conclusion
In a modern fast-paced world everyone highly values his or her time. And developing technologies make it possible to pay the bills from home, order food while commuting home or buying literally anything on-the-go. No doubt your users will appreciate it if you keep up with the technologies and take care of their convenience. Hopefully, this article was convincing enough to make you get down to optimizing your Squarespace site yourself or hire a professional web developer to take care of its mobile look and performance.