When Faced With ‘Mobilegeddon,’ Mobile Site Design and Performance Are What Counts

Conversely, if a mobile site performs great, but the design is poor, you could be pushed to page two of the search results on Google. This fast-loading site will miss 94 percent of mobile users.

Clearly, an integrated strategy that considers both mobile site design and site performance is the way to go. Mobile-friendly design strategies like Adaptive and Responsive can have a dramatic effect on your mobile performance due to the size of the pages that are being delivered to end users. In order to maximize mobile site speed, there are a few additional things organizations should keep in mind:

• Decrease number of bytes.
• Minimize number of requests.
• Reduce third-party presence.
• Limit domain sharding to two.
• Deliver static content from a content delivery network (CDN).

And if you only have one site because you’re employing a responsive web design strategy, consider these additional steps as well:

• Lighten up page design.
• Asynchronously load third-party provider tags (non-CDN).
• Optimize infrastructure performance.
• Defer loading of JavaScript.

Ultimately, getting certified by Google as a “mobile friendly” site is important, but it’s just one part of a successful mobile business plan. Web performance is being seen more than ever as a business differentiator, so focusing on both mobile site design and performance is a sound strategy regardless of whether performance is — or eventually will be — included in Google’s search algorithms. If organizations instill a culture of performance, they’ll be better poised to tackle whatever new developments come down the pike.