Mobile-friendliness: what to check

Most visitors reach you from a phone, and a page that is hard to use there loses the lead before it starts.

What it is#

A mobile-friendly page works comfortably on a small touchscreen: text you can read without zooming, buttons you can press, nothing that forces sideways scrolling. Search engines rank pages mostly by their phone version; this is called mobile-first indexing.

Why it matters#

For many local and service businesses, a majority of searches come from phones, often with urgency: someone needs a plumber now. If the phone number is hard to tap or the form will not fit the screen, they go to the next result. The phone version is also the one search engines judge.

How to check#

1. Use your own phone. Open your home page, a service page and your contact page. Do it on a mobile connection, not just Wi-Fi.
2. Read without zooming. Body text should be around 16 pixels or larger.
3. Tap targets. Buttons and links should be big enough for a thumb and spaced so that you do not hit the wrong one.
4. No sideways scroll. Content should fit the width.
5. Look for the viewport setting. View source and search for name="viewport"; see viewport.
6. Try the form and the call button. Does a tap on the phone number start a call?
7. Test speed. A free Lighthouse report in Chrome's developer tools scores mobile performance.

How to fix#

• Choose a responsive theme or template that adapts to screen width.
• Add the viewport tag if it is missing: width=device-width, initial-scale=1.
• Make the phone number a tap-to-call link, and keep it high on the page.
• Shorten forms to the fields you truly need.
• Compress large images and remove heavy scripts you do not use.
• Reserve space for images and banners so the page does not jump while loading; see cumulative layout shift.

Common mistakes#

• Checking only on a desktop browser that has been narrowed. Use a real device.
• Pop-ups that cover the page and are hard to close on a small screen.
• Hiding content on mobile. Search engines read the phone version, so text you hide there may count for nothing.
• Tiny links packed together in menus and footers.
• Blocking zoom for those who need it.
• Slow pages on mobile data.

Speed has its own guide: broken links and page speed.