Top Mobile-First Design Tips to Apply to Your 2022 B2B Website

Remember how we used to talk about responsive website design, and the need to consider mobile device users?

Well, the internet is well past the point in time when more than half of us are using smartphones for access. According to Google, that’s been the case since 2016.

By 2020, about two-thirds of all website traffic was mobile, and in March of 2021, Google made the switch to mobile-first indexing of all websites as it integrated Core Web Vitals into its algorithm.

At the same time, 5G and broadband improvements mean faster data transfer speeds and shorter page loading times, enabling bigger and richer websites that don’t test users’ patience.

The convergence of mobile-first access and high performance expectations from users demands fresh consideration when it comes to B2B company websites, and these proven mobile-friendly website design tips can help ensure you’re not losing traffic — or sales leads — to a poor mobile experience.

Why Does Mobile Website Design Matter for B2B Industrial and Manufacturing Businesses?

While B2B sites often receive more desktop traffic than many consumer sites, the improved page performance of mobile-first design strategies has an impact on SEO performance — and the SERP position improvements alone could be reason enough to implement a mobile-first approach.

The SEO improvements can be twofold: first, since mobile-first indexing is now the standard, the technical effect on SEO is obvious. Second, if your site traffic includes mobile users and you deliver to their expectations, their traffic can further improve your overall SEO performance. 

Another important consideration is today’s competitive labor market. Anything manufacturers can do to increase the number and improve the quality of applicants can help create a competitive advantage. Making it easier for prospective candidates to interact with your website on their mobile phones is good business.

RELATED: How Inbound Recruitment Marketing Can Help Grow Your Business

Mobile-First Web Design Tips & Your B2B Website

1. Verify your site’s actual traffic sources. Before jumping into optimizing your website for mobile users, use a tool like Google Analytics to confirm which device types are actually visiting your site. In spite of the statistics, desktops still account for the majority of traffic for some websites.
2. Confirm that your site is built using responsive web design so you know your content adjusts to varying screen sizes, rather than having to reformat. If you’re using a content management system like HubSpot, your design templates are likely built to look good no matter what device is in your users’ hands.
3. Ensure that your website is mobile-friendly. Mobile-friendliness is about much more than layouts and screen sizes. It’s all about ease of use for your mobile traffic, so make sure:
   
   • Touch targets, such as links and buttons, are at least 48 x 48 pixel
   • Popups don’t take over the whole page space
   • Important items are within easy reach of a thumb
   • Scrolling doesn’t get stuck on interactive parts of your site (e.g. a map fills the entire screen, and when a user attempts to scroll, it pans instead)
4. When redesigning your website, start with mobile site design. Then you can add features and enhancements for desktop websites, when and where they make sense.
5. Add site search. This makes website navigation easier for all users, but certainly adds value from a mobile user perspective.
   
6. Optimize your website’s speed, paying particular attention to its Core Web Vitals. These are user-centric, performance-based quality signals that reflect measures of loading speeds, responsiveness, and visual stability of your web pages with scores expressed respectively as Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). 
   

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Here are a few things you can do to make improvements that have an impact on user experience and Core Web Vitals performance:

• Avoid using heavy elements, such as video backgrounds, on mobile
• Push large images below the fold to achieve a faster LCP
• Make sure items in your layouts don’t shift around as pages load
• Don’t rely on JavaScript for your layout; it takes longer to load and can have an outsize impact on both LCP and CLS
• Locally load fonts
• Make sure any scripts you run justify their cost to performance.

Do you really need to load a Facebook tracking pixel when you’re not running Facebook ads, and your target audience doesn't come from Facebook?

Create Content with Mobile Users in Mind

In-depth texts, PDF downloads, and other long-form content pieces play important roles in an inbound growth strategy, but it’s also important to make content that’s easy for your mobile users to engage with. As you work through your editorial calendar, be sure to work in a healthy amount of simplified inbound content that addresses the needs of mobile users, including:

• Blog posts that incorporate bulleted lists or other formats that make them easier to scan and read on a smartphone
• Short-form and long-form video
• eBooks formatted for easy reading
• Podcasts
• Self-serve webinars and slide shows
• Streamlined and simplified infographics

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More than ever, your business relies on your website to deliver to expectations across the board: marketing, sales, customer service, human resources, and more. It’s not enough for your pages to look good; they need to get results. 

Before you get started, understand how to evaluate and improve your B2B website with our free checklist, 10 Key Elements of an Inbound Website. Click the link below to download your copy today.