You can’t just wrap old websites in bootstrap and call it a day

Just because you wrapped an existing website in bootstrap doesn’t necessarily mean it’s ready for use on mobile devices. This is especially true if the website was originally designed for desktop browsers. Yes, bootstrap can significantly improve the user interface and make it flexible across multiple screen sizes. But it’s also up to you to roll up your sleeves and make sure the code behind the scenes is also worthy of being mobile-ready.

So, here are a three challenges to consider that will help keep your smartphone using visitors happy.

Challenge 1 – The internet connection on mobile devices is not as reliable as your home or office wired network. That’s a fact. Download speeds can and will vary significantly. The larger the website in MBs, the more links it has to download, the more non-optimized images then the longer it will take to render and become ready for use, especially on a mobile device. And mobile users are a very impatient bunch when it comes to sluggishness.

Size does matter with web sites. Smaller sized files download faster. The fewer number of files that make up a website also means faster downloads. Optimize, optimize and optimize some more. Minify files. Combine multiple files into one. Optimize images for web display.

Challenge 2 – Site navigation needs to be rethought and resized with mobile users in mind. Modern mobile devices use finger-based navigation, as opposed to high-precision mouse pointers. Teeny, tiny buttons or links that look cool on an ultra-high resolution MacBook retina screen positively suck when you are trying multiple times to click on them with your fingertip. On some websites using desktop navigational elements on your phone becomes like a macabre video game as you repeatedly play hit-or-miss with your fingertips.

Mobile websites should be finger lickin’ good. Okay, maybe you don’t really have to lick your fingers, but at least right size your navigational elements while keeping people’s fingers in mind. And fingers come in all shapes, sizes and levels of dexterity. Bootstrap can help with this.

Furthermore, your design and testing should work equally well in both portrait and landscape modes (phone right side up or phone on its side), and you should be able to switch back and forth seamless between the two modes in the same browser session.

Challenge 3 – Mobile devices are significantly more sensitive to browser memory leaks and bloated web pages. The mobile operating system will simply kill of any app that it deems to be using too much memory. And most of us are simply not good stewards at keeping our mobile browsers tuned up and happy. Browser caches grow huge and don’t get cleaned out regularly; we keep too many tabs open and probably have more information in our browser history than the library of congress. To further add to our woes, many of us let our phones run for weeks without a restart which can allow memory leakage to grow over time.

Tweak as many aspects of web page performance that your time will allow. Optimize old code by re-writing and striving to add new efficiencies. I know it may sound crazy, but if your site is particularly large and complex then consider creating focused, mobile-only sites that have scaled down content, rather than trying the one-size fits all approach. Smaller sites not only load faster but they are easier to navigate, take up less memory and typically perform better.