Why your website needs to work on mobile: 6 quick checks

The 6 checks in the video

The video opens with the point behind every check: most people will find your business on their phone, and if your site is hard to use there, they’ll go elsewhere.

1. 1

   Step 1: Text you can read

   0:18

   If people have to pinch and zoom, the text is too small.

   Body text of about 16 pixels, dark on a light background, reads comfortably on most phones. That’s a common convention rather than a rule, so judge it on your own screen.

   The page also needs a viewport tag in its code, which tells phones to fit the page to the screen instead of showing a shrunken desktop layout. Don’t switch off pinch-to-zoom: some visitors rely on it.

2. 2

   Step 2: Buttons big enough to tap

   0:30

   Leave space around links and buttons, so thumbs hit the right one.

   Aim for buttons about 44 to 48 pixels tall, with a little space between them. The accessibility standard WCAG 2.2 sets 24 by 24 pixels (opens in a new tab) as the minimum, and Apple’s design guidelines suggest 44 points.

3. 3

   Step 3: Tap to call

   0:42

   Make your phone number a button that rings you straight away.

   A phone number set up as a call link opens the dialler with one tap. Write it in international form, +44 1534 for a Jersey landline, so it works from any phone, and show the number as text too, because computers handle call links in different ways.

4. 4

   Step 4: Pages that load quickly

   0:54

   Shrink big photos and remove anything you don’t need.

   Phones are often on mobile data, so heavy pages hurt most there. Our video on speeding up a slow website has six fixes.

5. 5

   Step 5: No annoying pop-ups

   1:06

   Pop-ups that cover the page make people leave.

   A newsletter box or offer that fills the screen as the page opens hides what the visitor came for. Google’s guidance on intrusive pop-ups (opens in a new tab) says they frustrate people and can hurt how a page does in search, and suggests a small banner instead.

6. 6

   Step 6: Test it on a real phone

   1:18

   Check every page yourself, and ask a friend to try it too.

   Go through every page on your own phone: read it, tap each button and send yourself a message through the form. Then ask someone with a different phone to do the same.

   For an outside view, run your homepage through Google’s free PageSpeed Insights (opens in a new tab), which tests the mobile version by default. Google retired its old Mobile-Friendly Test in December 2023.

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