People who use high-end mobile devices, such as iPhones or Android phones, can see standard ads and standard websites. Just because potential customers can see your desktop website on a mobile phone doesn't mean that it's mobile-friendly.
To reach the most mobile customers, it helps to create a mobile website that's tailored to the small screen, and makes it easy for people to make a purchase or take another action on your site.
When designing your site, focus on simple navigation and highlighting local options of your business. Google Ads also uses the speed at which your page loads to assess its usefulness to your customers.
See how your site scores on mobile friendliness and speed, and find out how to improve it. Test your site.
Best practices for designing a mobile site
When creating a mobile website use strategies that make the most of the size of mobile screens and how people use their phones. These strategies can help to make sure that your mobile site offers a great experience to customers and helps them to accomplish their goals on your site. In turn, this means better business for you.
Online sales- Simplify site navigation. Streamline your site menu and try to keep everything visible without having to zoom in to read.
- Make info accessible. Help people to explore before they commit to buy by using expandable product images.
- Help people make their purchase. Keep any directions or "buy now" buttons front and centre, and if you can, use existing account info to limit data entry for your customers.
- Allow people to pick up again on desktop. Make it easy for people to come back to their shopping cart when they're on their desktop computer, so that they can finish their purchase.
- Use click-to-call buttons or links. Avoid making people memorise your number or zoom in to see it.
- Condense your menu options. Make sure that it's clear that calls are the best way to get in contact with your business. Show a clickable phone number or button on every page of your site.
- Avoid distractions. Keep promotions and other directions to the sidelines so that people can focus on calling you.
- Simplify your forms. Make sure that people can access your forms easily, and that data entry is limited and easy to do with thumbs.
- Limit scroll and zoom. Your form should only take up the space available on a mobile screen. Scrolling and zooming make it hard for people to avoid mistakes while entering their info.
- Choose your data fields wisely. Make sure that the information you're requesting in your form is simple to access and easy to validate. Use validation to show errors for incomplete fields.
- Encourage visits above all. Make it clear that it's best for people to come to your physical shop. Show a map, location button or icon that links directly to your physical address and opening hours on every page of the site.
- Keep content limited. Streamline your site's information navigation to provide enough information to convince people to visit your shop.
- Avoid distractions. Promotions can help to convince people to visit your shop, but they shouldn't make navigation more difficult.
- Simplify navigation. Help people to research before they commit to purchase with a simple menu and larger text. Because a mobile screen is smaller, condense your menu options so that people can focus.
- Keep consistency across devices. The longer that it takes to for a customer to commit to buy, the more likely they are to do research on multiple devices before completing the transaction. Help them to pick up where they left off by saving their selections.
- Provide a home page link. If someone has hit a dead end in their research, make sure that its easy for them to get back to the home page to begin again.
Non-mobile optimised websites
Regardless of whether you have a mobile website, Google Ads will let you show text ads to customers using Google Search on a high-end mobile device, like an iPhone or Android phone. Smartphones have a full Internet browser (like a desktop computer), so a customer who clicks your text ad from the search results page can visit your standard website.
Bear in mind
Make sure that your landing page doesn't contain Flash content. Flash is currently not supported on iPhones or iPads, and has only limited support on Android and other high-end mobile devices. If our system detects that your landing page has lots of Flash content, then we'll automatically limit your ads from running on high-end mobile devices.
