Over the last few years, mobile has gone from the new and trendy SEO darling to the most important person on campus. The rookie has quickly become the superstar, and everyone needs to take notice. If your site doesn’t have a version that caters to mobile users, then not only will you be penalized by Google, users won’t want anything to do with you.

Google has provided a web tool that lets you know just how friendly you are to its mobile standards. When it launched in 2014, SEOs rejoiced. Now, Google has officially launched their new mobile-friendly testing tool.

Understanding mobile-friendliness

The way your website looks and functions on desktop just isn’t possible to recreate on mobile, and the way that users interact with your site is so different that the only possible solution is to adapt your pages to suit them. It doesn’t matter how much you actually care for mobile, you have to at least pretend that you like it. The majority of online shopping time is spent on mobile rather than desktop, and the vast majority (72%) of consumers want a mobile-friendly site.

In general, a mobile-friendly site is one that displays properly on a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet, and is designed to for ease of use for people’s fingers.

Google’s new mobile-friendly tool

Since Google’s goal is to create the best user experience for all people on the web, having a mobile-friendly site is rewarded and forsaking their recommendations is punished (remember mobile-geddon?).  This tool helps you find out what your site is doing right and what is wrong with your mobile version.

The new tool is revamped and better than ever. It is cleaner, faster, more spacious and detailed than its predecessors. The best thing is that it works seamlessly on a smartphone, and even gives you actionable steps to take after doing the mobile test.

Quick mobile-friendly tips

Being completely adapted to mobile users isn’t easy, but there are a few quick mobile-friendly tips that will get you ahead of the game:

  • Utilize white space – the more space between text the better.
  • Space links out – people don’t want to click two links at once!
  • Make it load faster – high-res images and video will slow your mobile site down. Mobile users don’t want to wait around.
  • Size matters – use big buttons and bigger font. Nobody wants to pinch the screen.

Being mobile-friendly is the key to success in modern business, and businesses need their websites to be properly crafted to cater to the 80% of consumers who shop on their smartphones. Google’s new mobile-friendly tool will help you make sure you’re doing it right!