7 Mobile Website Design Best Practices (With Examples)

With the majority of web traffic now coming from mobile devices, businesses can't afford to overlook the importance of a well-crafted mobile website.

By adopting mobile website design, you’ll also be able to deliver the best user experience to your web visitors - no matter where they are or what device they’re using.

In this article, we'll explore the best practices for mobile website design that boost engagement and conversions along with showing real-world examples to illustrate how successful brands implement these practices.

A website is said to be mobile-friendly if it can seamlessly switch to different versions based on the device being used to access it. This means that the website will work on any device - be it a laptop, smartphone, or tablet without compromising on functionality and aesthetics.

You may have heard the term “responsive design” being used in place of “mobile-friendly design” as they both mean the same. Responsive design refers to the fact that the website reacts or responds to the size of the screen and, thereby, the device being used.

It takes more thought, effort, and time to create a mobile-friendly website. You have to contend with slower processing speeds, smaller screens, and the lack of input devices like mouse and keyboard.

Yet, making your website mobile friendly is a must. Here’s why:

Google announced three major updates to their search ranking algorithms from 2015 to 2019 to benefit mobile-friendly websites. In fact, the search engine giant introduced its mobile-first indexing in 2019.

This means that Google is mainly crawling the mobile-friendly content on a website to rank and index it. Without a mobile-optimized website, you risk being ranked lower or not ranked at all in organic searches for your preferred keywords.

Mobile devices are driving most of the web traffic these days. The worldwide mobile traffic share in March of this year was over 66%.

Without a responsive website, you are missing out on a significant amount of web traffic. You may have robust and creative marketing strategies but if web users can’t find or interact with your website through their mobile devices, all those strategies are pointless.

Mobile websites are tailored for small screens and touch interactions, providing a smoother and more intuitive user experience. This can significantly reduce bounce rates and increase the time spent on your site.

When it comes to mobile website design, following best practices can significantly enhance user experience and performance. Here are key strategies to consider:

Laptop and desktop screens are usually more than 15 inches in size whereas mobile device screens are rarely above 7 inches. This makes it much harder to view website components on smaller screens.

Call-to-action components, such as a CTA button, need to be prominent enough to catch the viewer’s attention quickly. One way of doing this is by using contrasting colors.

You also need to increase the size of your CTA buttons so that they are visible. Larger buttons also make it easier for a user to tap on them with their fingers. The aim is to remove the need for the reader to zoom in to interact with your calls to action.

You can go a step further and ensure that the CTA button is in the first fold. This means that the customer doesn’t have to scroll down to find the CTA button.

Whitespaces must be used more extensively on a mobile website than its desktop counterpart. This focuses the user’s attention on the most important sections of the page and allows them to grasp key details at a glance.

Also, make sure that each page does not have more than one call to action and that its surrounding content is succinct. If the website is cluttered with too many buttons, CTAs, and links; it makes it very difficult for the user to click on just one component with their thumb.

Too many web components on a mobile website can overwhelm the visitor and even prompt them to leave. Keep in mind that it can take longer to load websites on a mobile device so simpler mobile website designs with fewer components will have faster load times.

On desktop sites, pop-ups work well for calls to action - especially just before the user is about to leave a webpage. However, they can be a pain on mobile websites.

Pop-ups are more difficult to load on mobile websites and are harder to view on small mobile screens. Users also find it difficult to close pop-ups as the “exit” or “X” buttons are harder to find and tap on.

A long list of options in a dropdown menu is annoying to navigate without a mouse and hard to fit into a smaller screen. Limit the number of menu options to 5 - choose only the most popular ones to add to the menu.

Hamburger icons are very popular on mobile websites. It is a navigation tool that is used to hide a menu on a responsive website.

The icon is usually present at the top right corner of the screen. Clicking on it reveals the full menu and users can then select a menu option to be led to a different page on the website.

The smaller size of mobile device screens can reduce the legibility of web page headlines and content. The easiest way to make text more legible is by increasing its font size. Web visitors can zoom in to read text but that negatively impacts their user experience.

A font size of 14 pixels is recommended for desktop websites but it's too small for mobile-friendly websites. Aim for a font size of 16 pixels for your mobile content.

Fancy, curly fonts can also make web content harder to read on mobile screens. Stick to simple fonts and use the bold option to highlight different lines of content.

Instead of experimenting with crazy font colors, we recommend using black as your font color. Black works best against a wide range of background colors and keeps the text legible even when users are looking at their mobile screens under the sun.

Without a keyboard or a mouse, the most convenient way for people to use their phones is with their fingers. Users navigate, swipe, and click on mobile websites mostly with their thumbs.

Clickable components should be kept at a minimum and placed where they can be easily reached with a thumb. For this reason it is best to place buttons, CTAs, and links at the bottom or the middle of the mobile-friendly web page.

These components should also be spaced out properly so that users don’t accidentally select two of them while tapping with their thumbs. This is especially true for text links. If there are too many text links on the page, it’ll be hard to choose one even with just the tip of the thumb.

Pictures on a responsive website should change position and reduce in size when viewed on mobile devices. Consequently, you need to have resized images for mobile versions of your web pages.

Most of the time, we use our phones vertically, which is very different from how we use our laptops. This is why your images need to be in portrait mode and not landscape mode on your mobile websites. Or, choose to use landscape images that still convey the same message even if they get cut off and converted to portrait images.

Lastly, you need to remember that images take longer to load than text. So, they should be compressed to maintain the load times of mobile-friendly websites. Processors on mobile devices are not as powerful as those on laptops. In some cases, if the images are too large, they might not even load on mobile browsers.

You can also opt for the lazy loading technique for images. In this technique, images load only when needed. For example, on a mobile website, images will load only when the user scrolls down.

Here are 4 brands that have been able to successfully implement mobile website design best practices on their websites:

OptimizePress’ mobile website is clutter-free and easy on the eye. They’ve maintained this simple, yet effective web design across their desktop and mobile-friendly websites.

The company has used a black-and-white color palette for its web pages.while blue has been used to highlight important sections such as CTAs and buttons.

The use of whitespace makes the landing page content stand out. The CTA button with the words “Get Started” is bigger in the mobile version and they’ve also been able to fit their introduction video in the first fold.

As per best practices, the menu is hidden behind the hamburger icon in the top right corner. Clicking on the icon reveals a minimalistic menu, in which the colorful CTA “Get OptimizePress” is unmissable.

OptimizePress helps businesses build WordPress websites complete with marketing funnels, checkout pages, and landing pages and their mobile-friendly website reflects their expertise.

ActiveCollab is one of the most popular project management software in the market. When the company decided to upgrade its application, it also changed its website to match its updated software.

The overall color scheme is calming and the use of pale orange as the background highlights the purple web components. This is a great example of using complementary colors in mobile web design.

Similar to OptimizePress’ website, ActiveCollab’s website has a hamburger icon at the top right corner of the screen to access the menu. The font size of the menu options is quite large and makes the page seem less sparse.

Note that the help button that leads to their live chat feature is placed at the bottom right corner. This makes it easy to reach with the thumb when the mobile device is held in one hand.

This is a website that takes the usage of whitespace to the extreme. And yet, the website is functional, informative, and easy to navigate. 

To maximize the loading speed of this mobile website, UXpert has added a CTA to get users to watch their introduction video instead of embedding the video on the landing page.

Upon first glance, you may think that their menu is missing. But a gentle swipe to the left reveals a stylized hamburger icon. The design of this mobile-friendly website is creative and unique while adhering to best practices.

Even though there are huge boxes of bright orange on the website, the text is legible due to its size and black color. The typography of this website is brilliant, beautiful, and eye-catching.

UXpert is a UX design company so it’s not surprising that their mobile website seamlessly combines UX design and responsive design principles.

Factor is a company that delivers meal kits right to their customers’ doorstep. They work on a subscription-based model and offer ready-to-eat meals to those who don’t want to cook, yet eat healthy.

Even though there’s more content on their mobile website when compared to the other examples in this article, there’s enough whitespace to give it a clean look.

On the first fold, they’ve been able to showcase exactly how their meal delivery system works with a few sentences and three simple drawings. The use of green for their CTA buttons makes them more visible against the pale background.

We eat with our eyes first, so Factor has added images of their gourmet meals to the website. The delectable food pictures have been optimized for mobile websites so there are no noticeable lags when the website loads.

Mobile websites should have a good flow with legible content and must be easy to navigate with one thumb. These features make it easier for website visitors to interact with your web content.

By following best practices during mobile website design, you can be certain that your web visitors are getting the same experience regardless of the device being used.

Businesses must develop mobile versions of their websites to attract a wider audience and ensure high rankings by search algorithms. Achieving both can have a significant impact on your customer website engagement and lead conversion rates.