Having a mobile-friendly website is no more an option – it’s a necessity. Know that mobile users now account for more than half of all internet traffic. That’s a huge amount of traffic you can not afford to ignore.
That should make you think just how important it is to make your WordPress site mobile friendly.
Does using a responsive theme make your WordPress site Mobile Friendly? Think again. Technically the answer is YES.
A responsive theme supposes to adjust itself to any screen size used to view the site. Be it a smartphone, a tablet, etc.
I have been using a responsive theme (a very popular theme) for a couple of months now.
When I check it does load fine on my smartphone as well as on a tablet. So I was quite satisfied and happy.
Just because the theme has implemented basic responsive design principles, that doesn’t mean it’s 100% mobile-friendly. Maybe because of this I got this Mobile usability error in Google analytics.
For when I checked Google Analytics, to my horror, I got this error report on Mobile Usability report.
Had it been 2 or 3 pages, I could have corrected those pages. But then it was more than 135 pages, which google detected as not mobile-friendly.
Why, not mobile friendly? because of the following issues.
But then when I re-checked on my mobile and tablet, all pages load fine. Texts were not small, images were loading fine, all clickable elements were not close.
The next thing I did was to check on Google’s own Test live Page for mobile. Remember this test does a live test. Surprisingly the test reported as Page is mobile-friendly in all green letters. See the image below.
In spite of using a responsive WordPress theme, my website was not mobile-friendly (according to google). I had no other option but to search for a plugin to do the job for me. To create a mobile version of my website.
Please read the following lines, why it’s important to have a mobile-friendly website.
“Statistics show that In the USA, 94% of people with smartphones search for local information on their phones. Interestingly, 77% of mobile searches occur at home or at work, places where desktop computers are likely to be present.
Google Announced Mobile-First Indexing On March 26th, 2018, Google officially announced that they would be using mobile-first indexing. This means that they are going to be indexing websites based on their mobile version- not their desktop version (as was done in the past). This update has come at a time when mobile searches are becoming the majority and desktop searches are becoming the minority.”
How to make WordPress site Mobile friendly
I tested quite a few plugins and opted for wp touch plugin (the free version).
The Mobile WordPress Plugin I tried and tested are
There could be many more but I settled for WPtouch mobile plugin
You can check online if your WordPress website is Mobile friendly on this Link
I know non-mobile friendly pages won’t get indexed by Google and this will result in my site ranking going down in SERP. In fact, it has taken a nosedive.
WPtouch is a mobile plugin for WordPress that automatically adds a simple and elegant mobile theme for mobile visitors to your WordPress website.
It will instantly enable a mobile-friendly version of your website that passes the Google Mobile test and ensures your SEO rankings do not drop due to not having a mobile-friendly website.
This plugin is so simple to set up. Their set up wizard will help you push a mobile and fully responsive version of your site live within minutes.
After installation activate the plugin. On the WordPress admin dashboard on the left click on wp touch > settings.
This will take you to the wp touch settings page. On the settings page enable “Display wptouch for mobile visitors” (this should be enabled by default). In the free version of the wptouch plugin, there are not many options.
However under appearance > customize, you will see a separate tab as “Switch to Mobile theme“.
Click on this tab, you will get almost all the customization option as you get for your theme.
You can change the background color of the header, text color, link color. Enable or disable categories, tags, etc. And some more options, for example, you can enable a slide show of your most recent posts.
The mobile version of my WordPress website created by wptouch mobile plugin loads fast and the texts are clear and crisp. No more warning from Google analytics.
And I may also add here that the WPtouch mobile plugin displays Google AdSense also. I remember reading some articles saying that, the free version of WPtouch mobile plugin does not display ads. No, it does display.
If you are using a responsive WordPress theme and still get WordPress site mobile friendly issues in Google Analytics, you can try wp touch WordPress plugin.
Hello! I am Ben Jamir, Founder, and Author of this blog Tipsnfreeware. I blog about computer tips & tricks, share tested free Software’s, Networking, WordPress tips, SEO tips. If you like my post /Tips then please like and share it with your friends.
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