The Ultimate Guide to Choosing a Mobile Website Theme for WordPress
One of the most appealing features of the WordPress blogging platform is the ability to quickly and easily setup a blog and start engaging with readers right away. Designing a mobile-ready WordPress theme is a great way to enhance your user experience and get more out of your web content. In this article, we’ll give you some practical tips on how to choose a mobile website theme for WordPress that is optimized for both desktop and mobile platforms. So sit back, get comfortable and prepare to be mesmerized.
Understand The Motives Of The User
With the upcoming 2020 version of WordPress and the growing popularity of mobile devices, it is essential that your website looks good on all platforms. This involves carefully considering several factors such as screen size, browser, and network speed. In the article, “Mobile-Friendly Design Patterns & Practices for 2021”, the CMO Council explores how marketers can transform their websites into lean and mean mobile-friendly units.
As the name suggests, a mobile website theme is made for use on small devices like smartphones and tablets. When someone accesses your website from a mobile device they will most likely see it as a list of articles or a blog. Keeping this in mind, you need to ensure that the content is streamlined and easy to navigate. A clean interface with easy to follow navigation will make your content easily accessible even on small screens. The user experience should be effortless and delighting.
Consider User Hints
Having a mobile site is one thing, making it work well on small devices is another. The good news is you don’t need to be a mobile expert to do this; you just need to know a few tricks. User experience is key when it comes to mobile usability, and one of the best ways to optimize your site is to consider user hints. A user hint is essentially a mobile-specific feature or design pattern that makes your site easier to use on smaller devices. Think of the classic example of a desktop website where you would use the alt text for an image to provide additional context for the reader. On a mobile device, this would be completely useless as the text would be completely cut off due to the limited screen real estate. As a result, you can include relevant image descriptions or add additional information in the form of bolded text or a simple FAQ.
Mobile-Friendly Design
When selecting a mobile website theme, it is important to bear in mind that not all responsive design is made equal. In order to make your site look good on different platforms, you need to employ various methods including making different device templates, using vector-based images, building testing environments, and ensuring your site stays up to date with the latest browser and device APIs. As well, it’s essential you use a framework like WordPress to ensure your site is easily upgradable as technology evolves.
Multi-Purpose
A multi-purpose website theme is one that can be easily adapted for different uses. Annotating your images with relevant metadata is one thing, tagging them is another. Having a single image of a horse that you use for both a blog post and an Instagram account is simple enough, but adding another photo for Twitter is going to cause all kinds of problems. As a result, it is usually best to find a theme that can be easily customized to suit multiple uses.
Security
A mobile website theme is not only limited to being small in size. Being secure and safe on the internet is of paramount importance, and this involves ensuring your site is not vulnerable to hacking and/or malware. When it comes to WordPress themes, this usually means checking for vulnerabilities before you use the theme and ensuring you maintain up-to-date backups. In some cases, a secure connection is not possible due to poor network connectivity or location restrictions. In these situations, you can choose a theme that offers an HTTPS connection as an option.
Colorful
When someone is scrolling through their device’s color screen trying to get to a specific point, the last thing they want to do is spend a lot of time trying to figure out what is what just by looking at it. As a result, it is usually best to choose a colorful theme that utilizes large, contrasting background images or colorful overlays to ensure the content is easily discernible. You do not need to be limited by the colors available on-theme, so ensure you have a range of options to choose from.
Simplicity
An element of simplicity could be incorporating several columns or using a minimalistic design pattern to keep things straightforward and uncluttered. A lot of emphasis is placed on simple website designs these days and mobile website themes are now a thing, so it is important to keep this in mind.
Usability
On a similar note, making your site easy to use is an important factor to keep in mind. This means making sure everything is clearly laid out and easy to understand. Instead of having a bunch of small images, large images that span the width of the page are preferable as they are more usable. Similarly, using a hover state for the images goes a long way to making the content more accessible.
Keeping these tips in mind when selecting a mobile website theme for WordPress will result in an easily accessible, mobile-friendly site that is optimized for various platforms. As well, these tips should help you make your site secure, and help it stand out among other similar blogs or websites.