Summary
Did you know that 97% of Americans own a cellphone? Most of your audience has the world in their pocket. Your content strategy needs to account for it.
Failing to optimize your website for mobile is leaving money on the table. Mobile optimization affects:
Mobile-friendly web design and content writing are not new topics in healthcare marketing, but they continue to grow in importance. Get a refresher on what you can do to ensure your website is mobile-friendly.
Text formatting matters, no matter what device you’re reading on. But phone screens are small and can be hard to operate. We owe it to mobile users to help them out a bit.
Scrolling on a hospital website is different from scrolling through TikTok. Users will get sick of it — quickly.
Don’t fatigue their thumbs. Write short sections and paragraphs to reduce scrolling time, decrease the visual overwhelm of text on a small screen, and keep users engaged longer.
Related: Learn 10 concise writing tips for healthcare copywriters.
Headings are like road signs. They tell users what they can expect to read about next. Headings should be descriptive enough to help users decide whether to read or skip a section.
However, headings shouldn’t be so descriptive that they’re multiple lines long. Remember: An 11-word heading that fits in one line on desktop could take up most of a mobile screen, depending on text size. Keep headings skimmable and as short as possible.
Extend the logic about headings to CTAs. A CTA button with 5-7 words may look fine on desktop, but wonky on a phone screen.
Follow these mobile-friendly CTA writing tips:
Related: Learn more about writing CTAs that convert on any device.
A text overlay is written content layered on top of an image. When done well, this design element makes good use of blank space in images. When done wrong, the text could block the image or blend in with it.
Images with text overlays must be mobile-friendly or responsive. The text should be the right size for the image, regardless of screen size.
MD Anderson gets this right:
Writing is one piece of the puzzle. Learn how to make sure your website design is also mobile-friendly.
Remember, almost 60% of users land on your website from their mobile devices. Every page needs text that isn’t too small and touch-friendly buttons that are large enough for big thumbs.
Pro tip: You don’t have to change the design of each webpage manually. Responsive websites automatically adjust to the screen they’re being viewed on.
It’s often easier to use a traditional navigational menu on the desktop version of a website. That same menu becomes squished on mobile. So it needs to be redesigned.
MedStar Health uses a (clearly labeled) “Browse this page” button to help mobile users navigate location pages.
There’s nothing worse than landing on a website and getting your screen hijacked by a full-page pop-up.
If you use ads or pop-ups, make sure they don’t take up the whole screen. You can make exceptions for logins and legal obligations such as age verifications. But try to limit pop-ups and ensure they’re unobtrusive.
It’s important for SEO that your website’s mobile version contains the same written and visual content as the desktop version. This includes metadata and alt text.
Google warns us about traffic loss for websites that reduce content on mobile:
There are 2 easy ways to check if your website is mobile-friendly: Use PageSpeed Insights or run some manual tests.
PageSpeed Insights provides performance reports for the mobile and desktop versions of your website. Enter your URL, find out if your site passes the Core Web Vitals assessment, and diagnose any mobile site performance issues.
A manual mobile performance check is more tedious, but it provides clear and actionable info. Open your website on a mobile device and poke around as a user. Check things like:
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AUTHOR
Ahava is a leading expert in healthcare content strategy and is recognized for her ability to make complex medical information accessible. She has spent nearly two decades transforming how healthcare organizations communicate with their audiences. Ahava is trusted across the industry for her clarity, evidence-based approach, and thought leadership.
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