Audit Checklist for a Mobile Site

As the usage of mobile phones has been increased now it is essential to have a mobile site, so now there is no thought to have question “Whether is it require to have a mobile site?” But instead now we need to question that “How good can we create a mobile site?” Though mobile sites are simply sites, but it is highly important to build or redesign our site for smaller screens and then linking them with desktop version of the site.

Let us consider the checklist that covers the following points:

1. Those mobile sites which are broken even then they are overlooked.
2. Optimization points that are generally missed by most of the people.

Tips to connect mobile site with desktop site: 

• It is important to note that we need to check for redirects.
• There is a need to allow users of mobile site to view desktop version of the site.
• If it is dynamically served site, then it is important to check for vary-HTTP header because it tells Search Engines as well as browsers that HTML will be varying along with user agent.
• It is required to have separate URL sites, that is we need to add “rel=alternate” tag so that desktop pages will be pointing to mobile version while “rel=canonical” tag will point mobile pages to desktop version of the site.

Technical Issues: 

•  It is the best idea to use Google webmaster tools to check crawling errors and statistics for mobile site.
• It is important to submit webpages of mobile site in webmaster tools using XML sitemaps.
• It is needed to check the entire mobile pages for technical audit checklist in similar way to desktop site.
• The most important point is to check site and page loading for mobile pages.
• When needed we can use server-side redirects mostly 301 and 302.

Design: 

• It is important to check site design on a number of mobile devices which are the top most used by users.
• Size of the links should not exceed or be less than 28x28 pixel margin between links.
• There should not be any flash related elements on mobile pages as most of the phones cannot render it.
• It is highly important to match desktop version and mobile version designs.
• It is necessary add view port tag so that mobile browsers will be able to resize pages to exactly fit into the device.
• Usage of pop-ups is not a good option.
• It has to be observed carefully that all elements on the page of mobile site end up similar to desktop site.

Navigation: 

• Check and make sure that visitors can easily reach pages on entire mobile site.
• Need to include links for the pages on mobile site which users are interested that can be analyzed using web analytics.

Content: 

• It is important to have each equivalent mobile page for each desktop page, even there can be more number of mobile pages in certain instances.
• Content should be brief on mobile sites.
• It is necessary to remove pages that are not required as they increase page load time.

Video: 

• Videos are to be checked in mobile sites whether they are uploading properly or not.
• It is the best choice to use HTML5 video player.
• It is needed to have responsive videos on mobile site.

SERP Differences: 

• You need to make sure that whether title for page looks good if it is displayed in two lines.
• Meta descriptions are to be winded up at 120 characters for mobile pages.
• Until and unless redirects are not set properly only mobile URL are shown up rather than desktop URL.

Finally it is important to check these mobile sites on mobileokchecker and make it for sure that you have not missed out and small coding errors