Mobile-friendly website: how your customers see your business on their phone

A mobile-friendly website is not a smaller version of your business website: it is the website, full stop. Someone looking for you from the street, in a hurry and using one thumb, decides in seconds whether to call you or move on. Here is what they look at, what almost always goes wrong, how slow counts as «slow» according to Google, and how to check your own site in ten minutes.

Why does the phone view matter so much?

For two reasons: one is Google's, the other is your customers'.

Google's: the search engine reads the mobile version of your website to decide what it says and where to place it. It is called mobile-first indexing, and Google declared the switch complete in October 2023. If some text is on the desktop version but missing on mobile, for Google it does not exist.

Your customers': they look for you on the way somewhere, at the bus stop, with the car double-parked. They open Google Maps, see your profile and tap «Website». Hardly ever in front of a computer.

There is no reliable Spanish study on what share of local business searches happens on a phone, so we give no number. Think about how you found the last plumber you used.

What your customer looks for in the first few seconds

Someone arriving on a phone has not come to read your story. They have a question, and it is almost always one of these four:

• Is it open right now?
• Where is it and how do I get there?
• Roughly how much does it cost?
• How do I book or get in touch?

If all four answers are on the first screen, the website has done its job. If finding your hours means opening a menu, scrolling to the footer and pinching to zoom, many people never get there.

A mobile-friendly website works more like a counter than a brochure: the important things at the top and large. It is the idea behind a landing page: a single page that answers before anyone has to ask.

The six most common mobile website problems

They repeat across hair salons, garages, gestorías (accountancy and admin firms) and restaurants alike:

1. Tiny text. You have to zoom in to read: a desktop site that was never adapted.
2. The phone number as an image. You can see it, but you cannot tap it to call. Same with an address that does not open the map.
3. Buttons crammed together. Two links so close that you tap the wrong one.
4. The menu or price list as a PDF. It downloads, opens separately and has to be read zoomed in.
5. Pop-ups covering everything. A full-screen cookie notice, a «subscribe» window and a chat that opens on its own.
6. The page slides sideways. Something is wider than the screen and everything wobbles when you swipe.

None is hard to fix; the problem is that you cannot see any of them from a computer.

Website speed: how slow is «slow», really?

The figure you see everywhere is that 53% of mobile visits are abandoned if the page takes more than three seconds to load. It comes from Google, but it is from 2016–2017: connections have improved a lot since. We use it because there is no more recent study as solid, and because the behaviour — if it is slow, you leave — has not changed.

Today Google measures speed with three indicators, the Core Web Vitals. According to its documentation on web.dev, a page is doing well when:

The third is the button that jumps just as you are about to tap it. On a small website, the heaviest thing is almost always uncompressed photos: five megabytes straight off a phone, dropped in as they are.

How to check your website on a phone in ten minutes

Do it today, without help:

1. On your own phone, off Wi-Fi. On mobile data, as people see you on the street.
2. Arrive the way a customer does. Search for your business in Google Maps and tap «Website» on your profile. If that field is empty, you know the first thing to do: how to appear on Google Maps.
3. Answer the four questions above with a timer. Each should take seconds.
4. Tap the phone number and the address. The first should start a call; the second should open the map.
5. Run your site through PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev), Google's free tool, and look at the Mobile tab, not the desktop one. With few visits it will say there is not enough real-user data; look at the lab diagnosis instead.
6. Hand it to someone over sixty and ask them to find your opening hours.

A warning: many guides send you to Google's «Mobile-Friendly Test». That tool no longer exists: Google retired it on 1 December 2023.

The checklist: what a mobile-friendly website needs

In this order, from top to bottom:

• Your name and what you do, in one line, readable without zooming.
• Open or closed right now, with today's hours and bank holidays kept up to date. It is the first thing to break; we covered it in holiday hours on Google Maps.
• One large button to call, message on WhatsApp or book.
• An address that opens the map.
• Services with prices, as text, not a PDF.
• Google reviews, or the link to leave one.
• Compressed photos, few and good.
• A cookie notice that can be rejected with one tap and does not cover the page.

Doing it yourself: the full sum

Quick and once. The ten-minute test, plus five more to fill in the «Website» field on your profile. Do it even if you change nothing else: it is free and tells you what your customer sees.

Slow, a long weekend. Fixing what you find: compressing photos, turning the PDF menu into text, making the phone number tappable, sorting out the cookie notice. If the site is old and does not adapt to phones, it does not get fixed: it gets rebuilt. This is where the agency or the nephew turns up.

The part that never ends. Repeating the test every month, because every new photo can weigh five megabytes and every change of hours gets forgotten somewhere. Half an hour a month that nobody finds: that is why so many websites that started out fine quietly break.

What we do

wiweb is a single page made of widgets — hours that say whether you are open right now, live Google reviews, services with prices, a map, bookings (Booksy, Nubapp and others), contact — on a template designed to be read on a phone first. The four questions sit at the top because the page is built that way.

The weekend shrinks to a short while: you pick a template, fill in your details and publish. Photos are compressed automatically, hosting and the security certificate are included, and the cookie notice makes rejecting as easy as accepting. Here is how it works.

The half-hour a month shrinks to a sentence: you type «say I close at three on Friday», preview it before it goes live, and approve it.

• Free, €0: all of that published at yourbusiness.wiweb.me, with «Made with wiweb» in the footer. No card, for good.
• Grow, €9/month (or €7.50/month paid yearly): your own domain, no wiweb mark, three languages, your Google profile managed from wiweb, and a weekly review of your website and your profile — speed included — with improvements you approve.

You can create your website free and compare the plans on pricing. The honest part: a fast mobile website will not push you up Google on its own, nor guarantee customers. What it does is stop you losing the ones who have already found you.

FAQ

How do I know if my website works on mobile?

Open it on your phone and check you can read it without zooming and without sliding sideways. Then run it through PageSpeed Insights on the Mobile tab. If the text is tiny or the page wobbles, it is not adapted.

Does Google rank a website lower if it looks bad on a phone?

Google reads the mobile version of your site to index it, so anything missing or unclear on mobile counts for less. Page experience is one signal among many; content and relevance weigh more. But a customer who leaves, leaves either way.

What is a good speed for a website?

According to Google, the main content should appear in 2.5 seconds or less, the page should react to a tap in 200 milliseconds or less, and it should barely shift while loading. On a small website, compressing the photos is usually the change you notice most.