Optimizing your rural healthcare website for mobile devices

Website traffic from mobile devices is over 50% and
climbing, it should be your #1 design concern.

Every year mobile computing devices become more and more a
part of our daily lives. This trend has every indication of continuing. Since
social media is already formatted for mobile, your concern should be ensuring
your website offers a great mobile experience. More than half the people
visiting it will be using a phone. You want your site to look great and be easy
to use or you will lose far too many opportunities.

Here are 7 ways to optimize your website for mobile.

Make it scrollable

Mobile users are accustomed to scrolling through a source of
information. Phones are better set up for this kind of interface than switching
from page to page. Not everything can be put on one page, but anything you
absolutely want people to see should be available without switching pages.

Use sharp, cropped photos

You want any photos you use to be nice and sharp. The screen
may be small, but they have high resolution. Be sure to crop any unnecessary
parts of an image so that what visitors get the best view of what you want them
to see.

Easy to use buttons

Mobile devices use a touch interface. If your website is
scaling buttons down to tiny little things on a phone, users won’t be able to
click on them. Test everything on mobile, but pay special attention to any call
to action buttons or links on your site.

Use short paragraphs

Long paragraphs easily get cut off on small screens. Try to
keep your message on point an as concise as you can make it.

Order is important

While mobile users are accustomed to scrolling down a page
for more information, what’s up top will still get the most attention. Make
sure your page order matches your marketing priorities.

Use video

Video is extremely powerful for mobile devices. It lets you
deliver a lot of information on a very small screen and without any action from
the user except clicking the play button. Make sure your video looks good on a
phone screen. Also, like the order on your page, put your most important
information early in your video. Most people don’t watch to the end.

Utilize AMP technology

Accelerated Mobile Pages is a Google technology you can use
to make pages load faster on mobile devices. The on-the-go nature of mobile
exacerbates reader impatience. You don’t want your pages prompting the user to
move on to something else.