Google Announce Mobile Speed Updates – How to Optimise Mobile Sites?

Following on from their announcement back in January, Google have started to roll out page speed updates on mobile. Previously, Google focused mainly on desktop but with the increase of users on mobile this doesn’t come as surprise as the updates to mobile speed that load slowly will negatively impact on their website rankings.

Google are always looking to improve the user experience and with 53% of visitors abandoning a mobile site if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load, it is crucial you can retain users in that small window of opportunity before losing a potential customer.

The update will only affect the slowest mobile sites and fast sites that don’t go faster won’t see a change to a ranking improvement, however it is important to see how the speed your mobile site is running at and what could be negatively affecting your rankings. Google currently have tools that can identify key metrics for speed of page and actively encourage you to use: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

So how can I make web pages load faster on mobile devices?

• Consider responsive design on your website

While your desktop site may be suitably designed as a fast loading aesthetically pleasing experience, on a mobile this may not convert over as well. For example, your mobile site might not scale your big hero banner correctly or your site may take an age to download affecting the most important aspect of a mobile journey, user experience.

• Image Optimisation

According to HTTPS Archive, 60% of websites consist of JPEG’s, PNG’s and GIF’s. Make sure the images you are uploading firstly are in the right format and are compressed. Developers can also now optimise images to fit the right mobile experience by device type, resolution size and even screen size.

• Remove Render Blocking JavaScript

Render blocking JavaScript is where JS is loaded before or during the visual part of the page. This will stop the page displaying in browser while it adds in the JavaScript which in turn increases the time it takes to load the page itself. Instead you want to wait until the DOM (web page) has fully loaded before loading in external JavaScript files.

Mediaworks’ team of experts can help you creates mobile-friendly, search-optimised websites. For more information about how we can help, call us on +44 (0) 330 108 4263, email info@mediaworks.co.uk, or complete the form below.