Mobile accounts for approximately 60 percent of the world’s web traffic. This upward trend is expected to keep growing as more businesses adopt developing technologies to make it easier for mobile internet users to browse through websites.
Elementor is a leading WordPress website builder that has been fully embraced by business owners. It makes it quite easy for businesses to create beautiful websites without coding knowledge, thanks to its drag-and-drop features as well as its many templates, widgets, and page layouts. There are many ways to create a mobile-friendly website, and using Elementor on top of WordPress is a very popular way of doing that.
However, without any experience in building websites, you might end up with a website that looks and works great on desktop but isn’t optimized for mobile. In this article, we’ll tell you our top 10 expert tips to make sure your Elementor site is fully mobile-responsive. We will cover tips that are easy enough to implement yourself and other changes that you may want to consider an expert for but will make a big difference in the long run.
Why You Need a Mobile-Friendly Site
A mobile-friendly site creates ease of accessibility that allows users to have a positive interaction with your brand. It makes your site compatible for viewing on mobile, improving navigation and readability. This then satisfies your customers, and you know what they say: a satisfied customer equals business for you.
A mobile-friendly website also helps with search engine optimization (SEO) ranking. Google prioritizes mobile-friendly websites. In fact, a keyword will rank differently on different devices, and mobile phones carrying a bigger number of web traffic means having a mobile-friendly website can help you take advantage of this huge volume.
Additionally, a mobile-friendly site establishes trust and credibility. This is true as your business is basically represented online by how your website looks. If it creates a good impression, then your business will have a great online reputation. This will strengthen your brand identity, and more customers will be willing to recommend your business to others.
10 Key Steps to Building an Elementor Mobile Responsive Website
To tap into the benefits of a mobile responsive website, you need to implement some measures that will influence the look, feel, and navigation of your site. For Elementor users, below are all the tips you need to create an Elementor mobile responsive website.
Tip 1: Choose the Right Theme for Your Website
You’ll need to choose an Elementor theme that is already optimized for mobile users. This should be a responsive theme that can adjust its design, fonts, and images automatically to fit a mobile screen. Your chosen theme will largely influence the look you’ll achieve at the end. So take your time and choose wisely.
Tip 2: Make Edits Using Elementor’s Responsive Mode
Instead of working directly in the Elementor page builder, you can make further design edits by accessing the Responsive Mode in the panel toolbar.
With this mode, you can select the Desktop, Tablet, or Mobile viewport icon to view the page at the width of that device.
You can also edit any element with a viewport icon for a specific device. This is a great feature as responsive edits are usually inherited from the largest device to the smallest. So, if you make an edit on the desktop, it will be applied to tablets and mobile.
However, with a specific device viewport, if you make certain edits on mobile, it won’t affect tablet or desktop because responsive edits aren’t applied upwards. This means you can set a different font on your mobile page, for example, without affecting your entire site.
Tip 3: Hide Elements on Mobile; Don’t Delete Them
While previewing your site on mobile, if you delete an element, it’ll be deleted across devices. Responsive edits do not work for deleting elements.
So instead of deleting a section, you don’t want to display on mobile, you can hide it using the mobile viewport.
You can also use this hack to keep a section on mobile but align it differently to desktop. Duplicate the section, make sure it’s only visible for mobile, and align it however you want for other devices. You can hide the original section for mobile users.
To access the visibility option and hide on mobile, go to Advanced Settings > Responsive and select Hide on Mobile.
Tip 4: Padding and Margins
Next, work on the padding and margins to avoid having too much or too little white space, which will make your site not mobile-optimized.
You can use a spacer widget, but it’ll create extra dividers and codes you don’t necessarily want.
Therefore, use the advanced tab settings to manually adjust the padding and margins and set values that fit mobile screens.
Tip 5: Make Sure Fonts Are the Right Size for Mobile Devices
We already touched on fonts, but it’s very important to discuss this point on its own. First, don’t assume that the font size you use on the desktop will automatically translate well on mobile.
You’ll need to adjust the font size for each specific device. And it’s quite easy to do so. Just choose the responsive mode> mobile viewport>site setting> global fonts>and adjust the font.
Tip 6: Use Mobile-Optimized Images
Images are important in a website, and they only serve their intended purpose when they are responsive. They may be responsive on desktop but not on mobile; thus, they can affect your website optimization.
To fix such an issue, set specific images for each device. Also, set display options specifically for mobile (e.g., the position and size of your images).
You can also optimize mobile images to reduce their file sizes, so they take up less space on your server and download faster when users visit your site. Tools like TinyPNG are a great choice; they’ll optimize the image without losing much quality!
Another brilliant idea is to use lazy loading for images. Lazy loading will reduce page load times by only loading images when they come into view on a page (rather than loading them all at once). You can add this feature by installing the Lazy Load plugin or by adding code snippets using developer tools like Debug Bar and WP Console.
Note: Codeable is not affiliated with any of the plugins mentioned in this article.
Tip 7: Arrange Columns Display to Fit Mobile Screen
You need to note two main components when arranging how the columns should be displayed.
First, the content on mobile might not look great when displayed the same way on desktop. For example, having your contact information after your picture on the desktop might make sense, but you would probably want to reverse this on mobile. In Elementor, you can fix this by using the ‘reverse columns’ slider.
Second, you’ll want to adjust column spacing if multiple columns are in one section. This is especially important for page elements like the footer. You can also wrap columns to display them underneath each other, which is useful for mobile.
To access the reverse column slider, click the edit section that’s between add section and delete section> click advanced settings on the left side of the left side of the elementer menu> scroll down and choose responsive.
Tip 8: Set Breakpoints for Mobile
You will want to create a point at which your website’s content and design will adapt in a certain way in order to provide the best possible user experience. Such a point is called the breakpoint.
To set this point, click on the Settings icon at the top right corner of the page, and set the breakpoint value for mobile how you see fit.
Next, save your changes by clicking update at the bottom of the page.
Tip 9: Use Global Elements Across Your Site
Using global elements or widgets across your site helps mobile responsiveness because you only have to set them once. Once you’ve ensured these elements look good across all devices, you can keep using them on new pages and be confident that they’ll offer a good mobile experience.
This tip is especially useful for CTA boxes, footer sections, subscription elements, etc.
Tip 10: Prioritize Mobile Page Speed
You’ll want to tap into other ways that can make a mobile responsive website apart from using the in-built editing functions on Elementor. This can include optimizing your site speed and performance on mobile.
You’ll need to use plugins and implement some technical know-how to achieve a high site speed that can make a big difference in creating a mobile-friendly site. Some of the measures to consider are:
- Enable caching
- Reduce redirects
- Reduce server calls
- Reduce database calls
Do I Need an Expert To Improve My Elementor Site’s Mobile Responsiveness?
The decision to consult an expert to help improve your Elementor site responsiveness depends on several factors. The majority of the factors we’ve discussed above are quite easy and can be implemented even with total beginners.
However, the process can be time-consuming. Also, part of the tips can be more technical and may require someone with the expertise to work through the process. The following are reasons why you may opt for help from an expert:
- You don’t have time to implement these tips yourself.
- You’re not comfortable working in the Elementor backend.
- You don’t have any site design experience, so you might want a design expert on hand.
- You want to implement more technical tips to improve your site’s mobile responsiveness and have no technical experience.
How do I find an Elementor Expert?
There are several ways of finding a WordPress agency or freelancer that is experienced with Elementor web design. However, the best approach is to use Codeable.
- Codeable is a reputable WordPress-exclusive platform for trusted freelance developers, including developers with verified experience in Elementor.
- Codeable can match you with a vetted list of experienced professionals who can help you improve the mobile responsiveness of your site.
- The hiring process is easy, and you have no obligation to hire if you change your mind.
- Codeable gives access to a few talented developers who are fit to work on short-term, custom, and just any scope of work.
- You pay the experts through escrow for fast, secure payment, and you get an estimate of the project beforehand so you can accept or reject the price.
- Codeable experts offer same-day response time allowing you to engage with them as soon as possible, thus cutting down on the time factor.
- You also get to manage your relationship with the developers, meaning you can always engage the same expert again if you’re impressed with their work.
Start Creating Your Elementor Mobile Responsive Website
A mobile responsive website will save you money and hours of marketing as readers will easily find you online, thanks to mobile-friendliness being a ranking factor on search engines. It’ll also help you create a base of loyal customers as most web users appreciate websites that are easy to interact with.
Website mobile responsiveness is such a huge factor that can make or break your sales, and assuming you have financial goals for your business; you shouldn’t leave any room for things that can hold you down. Your website’s mobile responsiveness is something you have control over, and you should aim to improve it as soon as possible to take advantage of the benefits it can generate for your business.
That said, you can attempt our top 10 tips yourself, but the most efficient way to improve your site’s mobile responsiveness is to hire an Elementor expert with Codeable. This lets you focus on your usual work and also makes it possible to get help from someone who makes more technical improvements that will significantly improve your website mobile experience.
Submit your project on Codeable and let an expert handle every aspect of optimizing your website for mobile.
