Google has started testing its mobile-first index.  As mobile continues to dominate Google search, other search engines are beginning to place more and more emphasis on mobile. So if you have been slow in joining the mobile revolution, now is the time to take action and Optimize Your Website for Google’s mobile-first index.

This new index will look first at the mobile version of your website for its ranking signals and fall back on the desktop version when there is no mobile version. It is important that someone viewing your site is mobile; because it will enable the person to expect entirely different experience from the one they’ll get on your standard website. This site will further show you 5 ways you can Optimize Your Website

Steps you will take to Optimize Your Website

Here are 5 steps you can take to optimize your site for Google’s mobile-first index.

1. Plan Your Site Layout

Mobile web pages will load slower than traditional web pages, so it’s important to keep the number of pages to a minimum. In addition, users won’t have the patience to click several pages deep on your site. Given that, it’s important to keep the site layout as streamlined as possible.

2. Reduce the Amount of Text Entry Necessary

Most of us have trouble typing on tiny Smartphone keyboards. When possible, use ‘Dropdown’ menus, checklists and pre-populated fields as a means of data entry. This helps minimize the challenges people face when typing text into a Smartphone.

Take a cue from FedEx’s mobile site. Even though a lot of information has to be entered into the site to accomplish the user’s goal, the use of checklists and ‘Dropdown’ menus cuts down on the amount of text a user must enter.

3. Identify your users

First, find out who your users are. Then figure out their typical web browsing behaviour. Once that’s set aside, find out what makes them tick. Modern users are of two major types: those who are browsing without a goal in mind, and those who are looking to perform a task. Each of these groups would require different “functions” based on their needs.

It’s not difficult to guess the demographics of The Body Shop website’s users since it leaves hints all over the page. Since The Body Shop is highly focused on “natural ingredients” and social activism, the monochromatic green variations, a slider of natural ingredients, “green” choice of images, as well reports on fair trades, pledges, and other social events is an understandably well-developed design concept.

4. Show full Content

Some designers, instead of making all their content work in fluid layouts, will simply opt to hide some of it from mobile users. Sometimes it’s because the layout is tricky, or they feel like there’s just too much content for a mobile layout. This is the wrong approach.

Giving users a “stripped-down” version of your site or app is not only unfair to mobile users, but can seriously backfire, and lose you, customers. You might have to simplify the layout to the extreme, move some content to other screens to reduce clutter, or just try to organize it all better; but it needs to be there.

5. Use compression tools

Try to find script compressors such as HTML compressor or Gzip compression that will automatically remove unnecessary comments, white space, or code. CSS minifier and CSS compressor and some more tools that will allow you to concatenate CSS code and improve performance. Image compression is also equally important; some that will reduce the size of your .jpeg and .png files while still keeping the quality intact include EWWW Image Optimizer, smush.it, optiPNG, and jpegtran.

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