Most of you will be all too familiar with Google’s latest algorithm update, infamously referred to as ‘mobilegeddon’, penalising sites that aren’t optimised for mobile. The update has made it even more vital that every B2B website design is mobile friendly, highlighted by the substantial dip in traffic that un-optimised sites have been subjected to in the aftermath of mobilegeddon. You can read more about the impact in Adobe’s report.

So what exactly do you need to do to please the Google gods? When creating a B2B mobile website design, we strongly recommend to choose a responsive site. If you’re looking for a quick, straight-forward design which requires little to no maintenance while being virtually error-free - then pick responsive.

To help you in your quest towards creating a B2B mobile website design, we’ve compiled a handy checklist that you can use throughout the website build process and once your website is up and running.

Lead generation

Generating leads is the main goal for the majority of B2B marketers and is the focal point of an inbound marketing strategy. Mobile phone users are much more action-orientated than their desktop counterparts, so make forms and calls to action simple to use.

Make contact information easy to access: Contact details should be a prominent feature of your home page and include functionality that allows prospects to call you directly from your site.

Simplify forms to increase conversion rates: Mobile visitors are less likely to fill out tediously long forms, due to time constraints and device limitations. Offer prospects a mobile-specific form with fewer fields. Also consider using drop-down boxes on forms, to help streamline form submissions. HubSpot increased its lead conversion rate by five times by shortening its mobile forms.

Make follow-up emails mobile friendly: If you’re following the principles of inbound marketing, you will most likely have automated emails that are sent to prospects after downloading your additional content, such as guides and e-books. Considering that 53% of prospects will read follow-up emails on mobile devices, ensuring that they’re optimised for mobile is essential. If prospects can’t read your email, then the sales cycle will come to an abrupt halt.

Usability

Mobile devices, despite their technological advances, still have their limitations, most notably their small screen sizes. Ensuring a user-friendly design is key – with 11% of visitors leaving a site that isn’t responsive.

Simplify navigation and buttons: Mobile users aren’t known for their patience. Keep navigation and buttons fluid and simple. The majority of mobile visitors will be using touch screens and menus need to be clearly clickable. Dropdown menus that include a few select options is the best approach – enabling prospects to get their desired content as quickly as possible. Also use large and responsive buttons. Nothing is more frustrating than repeatedly clicking on the wrong button. Ensure buttons are big enough to click on easily and aren’t arranged too close together.

Condense copy and content: Smashing Magazine warns: “You may be losing users if responsive web design is your only mobile strategy.” Your mobile prospects are most likely to be on the move and so will not be prepared to read through a lot of long text. Consider condensing and tightening your content, titles and paragraphs, making copy easy to skim and digest on smaller screens.

Performance

Your mobile audience expect a fast and responsive mobile site. On average, a prospect will only wait six to ten seconds for a site to load before abandoning the site altogether. Even a one-second delay in loading times can result in a 7% decrease in conversions.

Keep your site lightweight: To ensure that your mobile site loads in five seconds or less, HubSpot recommends to keep your site data under 20 kilobytes. Remember, the majority of your visitors will be using 3G rather than a wireless connection to access your site and so large sites will drain visitors’ data allowance and slow down load times. Unnecessary animations and large images will also drag down load times – avoid them.

Only use mobile-friendly software: Avoid software that isn’t compatible with mobile devices. A common offender is Flash. This software can’t be rendered by the majority of mobile browsers. Your prospects will likely be greeted with an error message, resulting in 43% visiting a competitor’s site. For special effects, use HTML5 instead.

Test and analyse: With multiple mobiles and tablets on the market, the performance and presentation of your site can vary considerably device to device. While a responsive design should automatically adapt your site dimensions to each specific device, it is still important to test your site regularly across multiple devices using emulators such as http://mobiletest.me/.

Practice mobile SEO: The location of your business is more relevant on mobile – therefore, it's best practice to implement local SEO. Ensure consistent spellings and abbreviations of your business name and address. On contact pages, include your location in title and meta tags to help local mobile visitors find your site more easily.