Is your website mobile-friendly?
Most people looking for a company do it on their phone, often one-handed while doing something else. If your site is a shrunken desktop page there, they have to pinch and zoom to find the number. So they call the next company instead.
How the checker measures it
The page tells the phone how to scale it (a viewport line in the code). It is built to be read on a phone.
The line is missing. The phone shows a shrunken desktop page, and most customers search on their phone.
This check carries 15 of 100 points. The checker only looks for that line. Open the site on your own phone to see whether the text is readable and the buttons easy to hit.
Why it matters
Google has read your site the way a phone does for several years now. It is the mobile version that ranks, not the desktop one.
A site that needs zooming feels old, and that rubs off on the impression of the company. The customer knows nothing about you, only that the site was a hassle.
The number and the form should be the easiest things to reach. On a shrunken page they are the smallest.
How to fix it
- Open the site on your own phone. Can you read the text without zooming, and reach the number with your thumb?
- If the viewport line is missing, ask whoever built the site to add it. It is one line in the page head and takes a few minutes.
- If the site was built in an old tool, it is often easier to rebuild than to patch.
- Run the checker again once it is done.
The phone comes first in every build, and the site is checked on real phones before it goes live. See what it costs.
What it looks like in practice
This is what it often looks like at a smaller company: the site is made for a computer screen, and on a phone that whole screen is squeezed into the width. The text goes small, the menu ends up in a corner and the number sits at the very bottom. The customer pinches and drags to read, and does so for a few seconds before backing out.
The checker looks for a single line in the code, the one telling the phone how to scale the page. If the line is missing the check turns red, and it carries 15 of 100 points. If the line is there it turns green, but that is also all the checker knows. Whether the buttons can be hit with a thumb and the text read without zooming is for you to judge, by opening the site on your own phone.
A second common case is the site that is mobile-friendly on paper but was built long ago. The line is there, the phone scales it correctly, and yet the phone number sits inside an image or in a menu that takes two taps to open. The measurement says green, the customer still finds it awkward.
If the site was made in an old tool it is often easier to rebuild than to patch. If it is merely dated, the line plus some work on the menu is enough.
Questions and answers
Is it enough that the site looks fine on my own phone?
That is the right place to start, but ask someone with a different phone to look as well. Screens differ in width, and a menu that works on your model can get cramped on a smaller one.
Is that the same as having a separate mobile site?
No. A separate mobile site is a second site on its own address, and that approach was retired long ago. Today it is the same page adjusting itself to the screen.
What is the viewport line?
It is a line in the page's code header saying the page should be shown at the phone's width instead of being shrunk down. Whoever built the site can add it in a few minutes.
Free site check
How healthy is your website, really?
Enter your web address and I'll check the page right away: secure connection, mobile-friendliness, load time, visibility on Google, and contact paths. You get a score from 0 to 100 and see exactly where it falls short. Free, and no account needed.
✓ Want the full review? I'll go through the site in depth and come back with a plan, free and with no obligation.
✓ Thanks! The full review will land in your inbox shortly.
I personally look at every site that's submitted. Albin
The other checks
The checker looks at nine things. Each has its own page.