With around seventy percent of people accessing the Internet daily from their mobile phones, Web designers can no longer afford to ignore mobile users. Sites which are not properly optimized for viewing and navigation on mobile devices, as well as normal computers, are inevitably going to get left behind. If you own a blog which uses the popular WordPress platform, you should take some extra steps to ensure that it is suitable for viewing on devices such as tablets and smartphones. Doing this will boost your traffic and keep your mobile visitors from clicking the back button.

Build a Separate Version of Your Site

Although it is not as popular a method as it once was, some webmasters build different versions of their blogs with one being optimized for mobile use and one being better suited to viewing on the big screen. Effectively, you’ll have two websites although there’s no reason why you can’t keep them on the same domain with the same host.

Having a separate mobile-friendly version of your blog presents the advantage of being relatively easy and it doesn’t have to cost you any extra. However, there can also be problems with automatic redirection and, of course, you will have up to twice the amount of content to maintain. When you update one page, you’ll need to update its mobile version separately.

Use Themes and Plugins which Support Responsive Web Design

There are literally thousands of themes available for the world’s most popular blogging platform and most of these are also available for free and, often, customizable to a degree. Responsive Web design refers to webpages which scale automatically with the resolution of the screen they are being displayed on. Potentially, this allows for you to have one version of your website which looks great on any device that’s capable of browsing the Internet.

There are various plugins and themes available for WordPress which can help you to redesign your site with relative ease. One of the most popular plugins for making your blog mobile-friendly is WPtouch. It is also easy to use and doesn’t require any special knowledge. If you are already used to using WordPress, you shouldn’t have much problem with this plugin. Other plugins worth a try include WP Mobile Detector, the WordPress Mobile Pack and MobilePress.

If you prefer not to use a mobile-friendly theme as such, you can use some of the above plugins to reorganize your existing website instead. This can be the better choice if you do not want to sacrifice any of your branding and other things that make your blog unique.

Test Your Site

As you experiment with making your WordPress blog mobile-friendly, you should test it to ensure that it is working out. When you attempt to browse your site from a mobile device, it should be a comfortable and optimized experience lest you start losing visitors who would rather search for a more suitable website. Test your website on a variety of smartphones with different screen resolutions if possible. Also, be sure to test your website on a tablet computer. If it is not practical for you to do this, you can use a free application such as MobiReady to find out how your website fares on such devices.