If your website is hard to read or use on a phone, you are losing customers and search ranking, since most browsing in Kenya happens on mobile data. Here is how to check whether your site is mobile-friendly and what to do if it is not.
Why Mobile-Friendliness Matters
Google uses the mobile version of your website as the main version it evaluates for search ranking. If your pages are hard to use on a small screen, this can hurt where you show up in search results, on top of frustrating visitors who leave before they even see what you offer.
How to Test If Your Website Is Mobile-Friendly
- Open a web browser and search for Google Mobile-Friendly Test, or go directly to it if you already have the link bookmarked.
- Enter your website's full URL (e.g. https://yourdomain.co.ke) and click Test URL.
- Wait for the test to finish. It will tell you whether the page is usable on mobile and flag specific problems, such as text that is too small or content wider than the screen.
- Open your website on your own phone and try browsing it the way a customer would: read the text, tap the menu, fill in a contact form, and check that images load properly.
- If you have access to a desktop browser's developer tools, use its responsive design or device toolbar mode to preview your site at different screen sizes without needing multiple physical devices.
Common Mobile Problems and How to Fix Them
- Text too small to read without zooming in, usually caused by a theme that was never designed to resize for smaller screens.
- Buttons or links placed too close together, making it easy to tap the wrong one on a touchscreen.
- Images or tables wider than the screen, forcing visitors to scroll sideways.
- Pop-ups that cover the whole screen and are difficult to close on mobile.
- Pages that load slowly on mobile data, often due to large, unoptimized images.
If your site is slow as well as hard to use on mobile, deal with the speed issue too: a mobile-friendly layout that still loads slowly will lose visitors before they see it.
If Your Website Isn't Mobile-Friendly
This usually comes down to the website's underlying theme or template not being responsive, meaning it does not automatically adjust its layout for different screen sizes. In most cases you cannot fix this with small tweaks. Your options are:
- Switch to a responsive theme, if your website runs on a platform like WordPress that supports this.
- Have a developer or web designer rebuild the affected pages with a responsive layout.
- If the site is old or was built without mobile in mind, consider a redesign rather than patching individual pages one at a time.
For related guidance on getting your pages found in search once they are mobile-friendly, see On-Page SEO Basics: Title Tags, Meta Descriptions, and Headings.