Make Your WordPress Website Mobile-Friendly with WP Astra and Elementor

Preface

In today’s digital landscape, a mobile-friendly website is no longer optional—it’s essential. With the majority of internet users browsing on smartphones and tablets, ensuring your WordPress website looks and functions flawlessly on these devices is crucial for attracting and retaining visitors. You need to optimize your website for SEO. After all you want to be found organically, right? Fortunately, achieving a mobile-friendly design is easier than ever, especially when you leverage the power of WP Astra and Elementor.These tools give you everyting you need to start your website.
In this blog post, we’ll guide you through the process of making your WordPress website mobile-friendly using these two popular and useful resources for WordPress! You don’t have them yet? Get Elementor here and Astra Pro here!

Why Mobile-Friendliness Matters

Before diving into the how-to, let’s understand why mobile-friendliness is so important:

• Improved User Experience: A mobile-friendly website provides a seamless browsing experience for smartphone and tablet users. This leads to increased engagement and lower bounce rates.
• SEO Benefits: Google prioritizes mobile-first indexing, meaning it primarily uses the mobile version of your website for indexing and ranking. A mobile-friendly site can boost your search engine rankings. Get the perfect SEO optimization for your website by reading this article.
• Increased Conversions: When visitors can easily navigate and interact with your website on their mobile devices, they are more likely to convert into customers or subscribers.
• Wider Reach: With a mobile-friendly website, you can reach a broader audience, including those who primarily access the internet through mobile devices.
• Competitive Advantage: In a competitive market, a mobile-friendly website can set you apart from competitors who haven’t yet optimized their sites for mobile devices.

Getting Started: WP Astra and Elementor

WP Astra is a lightweight and highly customizable WordPress theme known for its speed and flexibility. Elementor is a powerful drag-and-drop page builder that allows you to create stunning website designs without coding. Together, they form a potent combination for building mobile-friendly WordPress websites. With Elementor you can do so much more. Did you know that you can master Elementor Page Builder with these expert tips and tricks.

Hint: Before you begin, make sure you have both WP Astra and Elementor installed and activated on your WordPress website.

Installing WP Astra

1. Navigate to Appearance > Themes in your WordPress dashboard.
2. Click on “Add New”.
3. Search for “Astra”.
4. Click “Install” and then “Activate”.

Installing Elementor

1. Navigate to Plugins > Add New in your WordPress dashboard.
2. Search for “Elementor”.
3. Click “Install Now” and then “Activate”.

Info: You can enhance Elementor’s functionality with Elementor Pro, which offers additional features and templates.

Step-by-Step Guide to Making Your Website Mobile-Friendly

Now that you have WP Astra and Elementor installed, let’s walk through the steps to make your website mobile-friendly.

1. Choose a Mobile-Friendly Theme

WP Astra is inherently mobile-friendly, thanks to its responsive design. This means it automatically adjusts to fit different screen sizes. However, it’s essential to select a theme that complements this responsiveness.

• Utilize Astra Starter Templates: Astra offers a variety of pre-designed starter templates that are fully responsive. These templates can save you time and effort while ensuring your site looks great on all devices. Learn here how to install Astra Starter Templates.

2. Optimize Your Website’s Header and Navigation

A clear and concise header and navigation are critical for mobile usability. Here’s how to optimize them:

• Use a Sticky Header: A sticky header remains visible at the top of the screen as users scroll down, providing easy access to navigation. Astra offers a built-in sticky header option. Or, learn here how to create a sticky navigation for Astra Starter Templates with the free version of Astra.
• Simplify Your Menu: Keep your navigation menu short and to the point. Use dropdown menus to organize content and avoid clutter. Dropdown menus are very important for the users experience.
• Implement a Hamburger Menu: On mobile devices, use a hamburger menu (three horizontal lines) to collapse the navigation menu, saving valuable screen space. You can set this up in the Astra theme options.

3. Design with Mobile Responsiveness in Mind Using Elementor

Elementor provides powerful tools for designing mobile-responsive pages. Here’s how to use them:

• Use Elementor’s Responsive Mode: Elementor’s responsive mode allows you to preview and customize your designs for desktop, tablet, and mobile devices. To access it, click the responsive mode icon at the bottom of the Elementor panel.

    ...

• Adjust Column Widths: Control the width of columns on different devices to ensure your content is displayed correctly. For example, you might want to stack columns on mobile devices to improve readability.
• Customize Font Sizes: Adjust font sizes for different devices to ensure your text is legible. Smaller fonts are often necessary for mobile screens.
• Optimize Image Sizes: Use optimized images that are appropriately sized for mobile devices. Large images can slow down page loading times, negatively impacting user experience. Compress your images before uploading them to WordPress. There are several free tools available online for image compression. You can also use plugins like Smush or Imagify to automatically optimize images upon upload.
• Hide or Show Elements: Elementor allows you to hide or show elements on different devices. This is useful for removing unnecessary content from mobile screens.

/* Hide on Desktop */
.elementor-hidden-desktop {
    display: none !important;
}

/* Hide on Tablet */
.elementor-hidden-tablet {
    display: none !important;
}

/* Hide on Mobile */
.elementor-hidden-mobile {
    display: none !important;
}

Info: Remember to test your designs on real mobile devices to ensure they look and function as expected. Don’t rely solely on Elementor’s preview mode.

4. Optimize Content for Mobile Devices

Mobile users have different browsing habits than desktop users. Here’s how to optimize your content for mobile devices:

• Use Short Paragraphs: Break up your text into short, easily digestible paragraphs. This makes your content more readable on small screens.
• Use Bullet Points and Lists: Use bullet points and lists to present information in a clear and organized manner. This helps mobile users quickly scan and understand your content.
• Write Concise Headlines: Keep your headlines short and attention-grabbing. This encourages mobile users to read further.
• Optimize Calls to Action (CTAs): Make your CTAs clear and easy to tap on mobile devices. Use large, finger-friendly buttons and prominent placement.

5. Test Your Website on Different Devices

Testing is a crucial step in ensuring your website is truly mobile-friendly. Here’s how to do it:

• Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test: Google offers a free tool that analyzes your website and identifies any mobile usability issues. You can access it here.
• Test on Real Devices: Test your website on a variety of smartphones and tablets to ensure it looks and functions correctly. Ask friends or colleagues to test your site on their devices.
• Use Browser Developer Tools: Modern web browsers like Chrome and Firefox offer developer tools that allow you to simulate different screen sizes and resolutions. This is useful for quickly testing your website’s responsiveness. You might want to quickly make high resolution screenshots in base 64? Learn how here.

6. Improve Page Loading Speed

Mobile users expect websites to load quickly. Slow loading times can lead to frustration and abandonment. Here’s how to improve your website’s loading speed:

• Optimize Images: As mentioned earlier, use optimized images that are appropriately sized for mobile devices.
• Enable Browser Caching: Browser caching allows visitors’ browsers to store static files, reducing loading times on subsequent visits. You can enable browser caching using a plugin like W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache.
• Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN): A CDN stores your website’s files on multiple servers around the world, ensuring that visitors can access your content from a server that is geographically close to them. This can significantly improve loading times.
• Minify CSS and JavaScript: Minifying CSS and JavaScript files reduces their file size, leading to faster loading times. You can use a plugin like Autoptimize or WP Rocket to minify your files.

Info: Aim for a page loading time of under three seconds to provide an optimal user experience.

Best Practices for Mobile-Friendly Design

Here are some additional best practices to keep in mind when designing for mobile devices:

• Use a Single-Column Layout: Single-column layouts work best on mobile devices, as they allow users to easily scroll through content.
• Avoid Using Flash: Flash is not supported on many mobile devices and can negatively impact user experience.
• Use Readable Fonts: Choose fonts that are easy to read on small screens. Avoid using overly decorative or complex fonts. Choose the right fonts for your website by reading this article.
• Use Sufficient White Space: White space (also known as negative space) helps to create a clean and uncluttered design. Use white space to separate elements and improve readability.

Conclusion

Making your WordPress website mobile-friendly with WP Astra and Elementor is a straightforward process. By following the steps outlined in this guide, you can create a website that looks great and functions flawlessly on all devices. Remember, a mobile-friendly website is essential for providing a positive user experience, improving your SEO rankings, and reaching a wider audience.

So, take the time to optimize your website for mobile devices, and you’ll reap the rewards in the form of increased traffic, engagement, and conversions.