How to Make Your Website Mobile Friendly

Over 60% of your visitors are on a phone. Here's how to check if your site is working for them, what's usually wrong, and how to fix it.

Over 60% of UK web traffic now comes from mobile devices. Google indexes the mobile version of your site first. And yet most business websites were designed on a desktop, tested on a desktop, and never properly checked on a phone.

Here's how to make your website mobile friendly — what to check, what to fix, and what actually matters.

01 — Check it first

Three ways to see how bad it is.

1. Pick up your phone. Open your site. Try to find your phone number, submit a form, and read a service page. If any of those are hard, you have a problem.
2. Google PageSpeed Insights. Free tool. Enter your URL and select Mobile. Review the performance findings alongside what you observe on a real phone; a score alone cannot tell you how many customers you lose.
3. Google Search Console. Review the mobile URLs in the Core Web Vitals report for real-user performance issues. Google retired the Mobile Usability report in December 2023. Google's update on mobile usability tools.

02 — The common problems

What's usually wrong.

Text too small to read. Body text should be at least 16px on mobile. If visitors have to pinch to zoom, they'll leave instead.

Buttons too close together. Tap targets should be at least 44×44px with space between them. Misclicks frustrate people.

Content wider than the screen. Horizontal scrolling on mobile is a dead giveaway of a site that wasn't built responsively.

Slow load times. Uncompressed images, bloated code, too many scripts. Mobile networks are slower than wifi. Every second counts.

Pop-ups that can't be closed. Intrusive full-screen interstitials can harm the mobile experience and search performance.

Forms that fight the user. Tiny inputs, wrong keyboard types, no autofill. Every extra second in a form costs completions.

Your customer is on their phone, standing in their kitchen, with a leaking pipe. If your site doesn't load, they call the next one.

03 — How to fix it

Prioritised by impact.

1. Responsive design. The site should reflow to fit any screen. If it doesn't, it needs rebuilding — there's no patch for this.
2. Compress every image. Use WebP format. Serve different sizes for different screens. This alone can halve load time.
3. Simplify the navigation. Hamburger menu, 5–7 items max, phone number visible without scrolling.
4. Make the primary action obvious. One big button — Call, Book, Get a Quote — visible on every screen.
5. Test forms on a real phone. Set input types correctly (tel, email) so the right keyboard appears.
6. Remove what's not essential. Sliders, animations, and decorative elements that look nice on desktop often just slow down mobile.

04 — Why it matters for SEO

Google ranks your mobile site, not your desktop one.

Google uses mobile-first indexing: the mobile version of your site's content is the basis for indexing. If your mobile experience is poor, your SEO can suffer — regardless of how good the desktop version looks.

Core Web Vitals measure loading, responsiveness and visual stability for both mobile and desktop visitors. They contribute to page experience, but passing them does not guarantee a particular ranking.

05 — When to rebuild

Sometimes a fix isn't enough.

If your site was built more than 5 years ago, isn't responsive, or scores under 30 on PageSpeed, patching it is usually throwing good money after bad. A rebuild on a modern platform — Squarespace, Shopify, or custom — will be faster, cheaper to maintain, and built for mobile from the ground up.

Not sure which side of the line you're on? Send us your URL. We'll check it and tell you honestly whether it needs fixing or replacing.

Thinking about a rebuild? Read: How much does a website cost in the UK?