Mobile site, the most common errors: the choice of configuration

The choice of the configuration of your mobile site represents one of the main errors since its repercussions are manifold. Those who want to have a site optimized for mobile devices can choose between:

• separate mobile site;
• adaptive layout;
• responsive design.

The last solution is the one that is preferred, both because Google rewards this aspect in its ranking and because a responsive type design is able to automatically adapt to the size of the screen on which the site is displayed, regardless of the device used.

Furthermore, those who opt for a mobile site separate from the desktop version are exposed to greater risks of making mistakes in the redirection of web pages .

Mobile site, the most common mistakes: site performance

Anyone viewing a site from a mobile device expects the web page to load quickly . The risk that the user, in front of a white page not yet loaded, will decide to close the site and open another competing web page is very high.

For this reason, it is good to limit the use of:

• too large and / or uncompressed images;
• heavy and slow loading banner ads;
• web content not supported by mobile devices (such as flash videos).

In the same way, it is important to clean the HTML, CSS and Javascript code and also to proceed with compression here.

Mobile site, the most common errors: the interface and usability

It is not certain that a web page that can load quickly on mobile devices will then offer a satisfying user experience.

As regards the interface and usability of the site, the most common errors of those who want to create a site optimized for mobile are related:

• the definition of the display area (in the absence of explicit indications, the default width for desktop screens is automatically used on smaller screens);
• the use of a font that is too small and difficult to read ;
• the presence of clickable elements too close to each other;
• the too big interstitials;
• to too intrusive banner ads that are likely to affect the display of site content.

Mobile site, the most common mistakes: communication with Google

Another of the most common errors related to mobile sites is to limit the access of Googlebot to certain elements of the site (for example JavaScript files), blocking their crawling in the robots.txt file .

It is Google himself who advises against this practice as it does not allow the understanding of the contents of the site and its analysis aimed at determining its positioning within the search engine. The advice is to show Google the website as it is displayed to the general user.

Mobile site, the most common mistakes: competition

We have already mentioned the possibility that a user, in front of a website not perfectly optimized for mobile devices, decides to close the page and turn to another resource available on the web. Those who want to create an optimized site for mobile devices , therefore, would do well to analyze the market context in which it operates and, specifically, the competitors’ sites , so that they can find some useful information.