Over 60% of all web traffic occurs on a mobile device, such as a smartphone or tablet. It’s incredibly important to be sure your website looks great and functions flawlessly on many different types of devices – but how is the typical small business owner supposed to do this?

Google has the answer. If you enter your website’s URL in Google’s Mobile Friendly tool, you’ll receive a report that tells you exactly how mobile friendly your site is, along with an image that shows how your current website displays on a smartphone screen.

It can be an eye-opening experience! The report is helpful in two ways. First, you’ll get a list of issues that prevent your website from being mobile friendly. These include items like:

The Text is Too Small

Text that appears easy to read when viewed on a large monitor can disappear to practically sub-atomic size when viewed on a mobile device. Ideally, your customer will be able to read the text on your page easily without manually resizing it.

Mobile Viewports Are Not Set

Mobile viewports are what enables web pages to adjust in width and scale to display properly on a mobile device screen. If you don’t have your mobile viewports set, your website will not scale to fit smaller screens.

Links Are Too Close Together

On a mobile device, we click links with our fingertips or thumbs. If the links are too close together – which is very common with small text – it’s frustratingly easy for customers to click the wrong link inadvertently.

The second way the report is helpful is that Google will suggest steps you can take to make your website more mobile friendly. These suggestions are organized into groups; one set is for developers and people who work on their own website, while the second spells out what a business owner needs to tell the web company they work with to do in order to make the website mobile friendly.

This is a great first step for every business owner who wants to be sure that their website works perfectly, no matter what device their customer may be using. Be prepared to retest your website periodically, as different devices come on the market and parameters change – think of it as looking in the mirror before you head out the door. It’s a quick check to make sure your business always looks its best.