Why does my website need to work well on phones?

Most visitors arrive on a phone, and Google uses the phone version of your site to decide how it ranks. Responsive design makes one site fit every screen.

Responsive design means one website that rearranges itself to fit the screen it is on. On a wide computer screen, you may see three columns side by side. On a phone, the same content stacks into one column, the menu folds into a button, and the text stays large enough to read without zooming.

Why it matters for your business

Your customers are on phones. Many people look up a business, check hours, or tap to call from their phone.
Google looks at the phone version. Google uses the mobile version of your pages to decide what goes in search results. If something is missing on the phone version, Google may not see it.
Google recommends it. Google's own guidance recommends responsive design because the content is the same on every device and it is the simplest to maintain.

What a good phone experience looks like

Text is readable without pinching or zooming
Buttons are big enough to tap and not crowded together
Your phone number can be tapped to call
Nothing is wider than the screen, so there is no sideways scrolling
Pages load quickly on a phone connection
Pop-ups do not cover the whole screen

How to check your own site

Open your website on your phone.
Visit your home page, a service page and your contact page.
Try to call you, fill in your form and find your address.
Turn the phone sideways and check again.
Run your page through Google's PageSpeed Insights and look at the Mobile results.

We can do this for you. If anything is hard to read, hard to tap or cut off on your phone, open a request in your client portal with the page address, your phone model and a screenshot. Our team will fix it.

Common problems

If a page looks fine on your phone but a customer says it is broken, ask which phone and browser they used. Older phones can show things differently.
If text runs off the screen, a very long word or web address may be the cause. Send us a screenshot.
If a photo looks cropped on the phone, it may need a different version for small screens. Tell us which photo.

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