Spend ten minutes on your own site with a phone: what appears before the first scroll, whether the menu makes sense, whether the number can be tapped, and whether forms work with a thumb.

Two different websites

The website gets reviewed at the office, on a wide monitor, by people who already know where everything is.

Most of its visitors never see that version. More than half of web browsing now happens on phones, and for a business people look up in a hurry, the phone is often the main way in.

The phone version is a different website in practice: one long column, a menu hidden behind an icon, and buttons competing for the width of a thumb.

Plenty of owners have never used theirs properly: from a search result, on mobile data, the way a customer would.

Ten minutes on a real phone

Use an actual phone, not the narrow view in a desktop browser. A simulation has no thumb, no slow connection and no screen held at arm's length in daylight.

Turn off Wi-Fi so the phone uses mobile data, search for the business the way a customer would, and tap through from the result. Then check five things.

The third takes five seconds to check, and it is wrong more often than anyone expects.

What shows before the first scroll

On a monitor, the top of the home page might hold a logo, a menu, a headline, a phone number and a button. On a phone, it often holds only the logo and half a slideshow.

A visitor arriving from a search result decides within moments whether they are in the right place. They need to see what you do, where, and how to reach you.

A large decorative image pushes all of that out of sight. So does a header that fills a third of the screen because the logo was never resized for a narrow width.

If the first screen on a phone does not say what the business does, it needs changing.

The menu behind the icon

On a phone, the menu usually collapses into an icon of three lines. Most people know to tap it. What they find inside is the problem.

A menu with twelve items and submenus becomes a long list in small type.

Desktop menus often open a submenu when the pointer hovers over an item. A phone has no hover, so tapping that item may open its page, its submenu, or nothing obvious at all.

Open the menu and try to reach the page customers most often want. If it takes more than two taps, or any tap does something unexpected, write it down.

The number that cannot be tapped

A visitor who wants to call expects to tap the number. Set up as a proper link, it starts the call. As part of the logo image, it does nothing.

Some phones spot numbers in ordinary text and make them tappable anyway, but not all do, and a number inside an image is never spotted.

When the tap fails, the visitor has to memorise the number or copy it and switch apps. Some will. Others return to the results page, where the next listing has a call button.

The fix is small: put the number at the top of every page as text, linked so that a tap starts the call.

Forms built for a keyboard

A form that is easy at a desk can be miserable on a phone: fields too small to tap, dropdowns with forty options, a tiny pop-up calendar, a captcha with distorted letters.

Each field should open the matching keyboard: a number pad for a phone number, the @ key for an email address. That is a setting in the form, often missing.

Text size matters too. On an iPhone, if the text in a field is set smaller than about 16 pixels, the page zooms in when someone taps the field, and they have to pinch back out.

Fill in every form on the site with one thumb, standing up. Anything that needs two hands or a second attempt needs fixing.

A worked example

A pest control company with two technicians had its site reviewed every spring by the owner and the office manager, on the office computer. It looked fine there.

Its customers mostly arrived on phones, often standing in a kitchen looking at evidence of mice, or watching wasps fly in and out under the eaves.

On a phone, the first screen showed the logo and a stock photograph of an insect. The phone number was part of the logo image, so tapping it did nothing.

The inspection form asked for the property type from a long dropdown, and for a preferred date from a calendar wider than the screen.

The fix took a morning: the number as tappable text at the top of every page, one line saying what the company treats and where, and a form reduced to four fields.

The office now checks the site on a phone first and the monitor second.

Pop-ups and things that cover the page

A newsletter pop-up that is a modest box on a monitor can fill an entire phone screen, with a close button too small to hit.

Visitors who cannot find the close button leave. And since last January, pages that cover their content with a pop-up when someone arrives from search on a phone may rank lower in Google.

Open any pop-up on a phone and close it. If that takes more than one easy tap, change it or remove it.

The counter-case

Some businesses really are used mostly on desktops.

A supplier whose customers order from an office, or a firm whose clients research at work, may find most visits come from computers. The device reports in Analytics will say so.

Even then, the phone version is what a referred client sees when checking you between meetings. Google has also been testing the use of the phone version of pages to decide rankings.

So the scope changes, not the need. Check less often if you must, but use the site on a phone, the way a customer does.

The ten minutes

  1. Turn off Wi-Fi on your phone.
  2. Search for the business and tap through.
  3. Read the first screen without scrolling.
  4. Tap the phone number on three pages.
  5. Open the menu and find your main service.
  6. Fill in each form with one thumb.
  7. Write down everything that needed a second attempt.

Step four is the one with most at stake. A number that cannot be tapped makes a ready caller work to reach you, while the next business in the results asks nothing of them.

Deciding which page matters most on that small screen starts with what your website was supposed to do.

Frequently asked questions

Why check the site on a phone?

Because most visitors see the phone version, while the people who review the site usually see the desktop one, where everything behaves differently.

Is a desktop browser's phone view enough?

No. It shows the narrow layout but not a thumb, a slow connection or bright daylight. Use a real phone on mobile data.

What should show before the first scroll?

What the business does, where it works and how to reach it. A large decorative image or an oversized header often hides all three.

Why does tapping my phone number do nothing?

Usually because it is part of an image or not set up as a link. Put it in the header as text, linked so a tap starts a call.

What makes a form hard on a phone?

Small fields, long dropdowns, cramped date pickers, captchas and the wrong keyboard. Fill in every form with one thumb to find them.

Do pop-ups matter on phones?

Yes. A small box on a monitor can fill a phone screen, and Google has said pages covered by pop-ups on arrival from search may rank lower.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

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