If you run a Shopify Plus store, mobile SEO is crucial for boosting your traffic and sales. With more Australians shopping on their phones, optimising your store for mobile ensures you stay competitive. Here’s what you need to know:
- Site Speed: Compress images, minify code, and consider AMP to improve load times.
- Mobile Design: Use responsive layouts, proper viewport settings, and mobile-friendly buttons.
- Content Optimisation: Keep text short, readable, and scannable with clear headings and bullet points.
- User Experience: Simplify forms, streamline checkout, and ensure smooth navigation.
- Analytics & Testing: Use GA4, Google Search Console, and device testing to track and improve performance.
A mobile-friendly store not only improves search rankings but also creates a better shopping experience, increasing sales and customer loyalty.
Ready to optimise your Shopify Plus store? Let’s dive into the details.
Speed Up Your Mobile Store
A fast-loading site is crucial for mobile SEO.
Optimising Images and Code
Use image compression tools and efficient formats like WebP to reduce file sizes without losing quality. Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML to cut down unnecessary code and improve load times. These small tweaks can make a noticeable difference in speed.
Setting Up AMP
Consider using Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) to make your mobile pages load faster. While AMP requires careful planning and testing to ensure everything works smoothly, it can significantly improve mobile performance.
Mobile-Ready Design Elements
Making your Shopify Plus store mobile-friendly is essential to ensure it works smoothly on all devices. Here’s a breakdown of the key design features to focus on.
Responsive Layouts
Your store’s layout should adjust effortlessly to various screen sizes. Use a fluid grid system that resizes content based on the device’s viewport. For mobile devices, keep the main content column between 320px and 768px wide to avoid horizontal scrolling and maintain readability.
Set up product listings with flexible grids. On desktops, you can use multi-column layouts, but switch to a single-column format for mobile. This approach keeps the design clean and makes the best use of limited screen space.
Viewport Settings
Configuring the viewport properly is a must for mobile optimisation. Add this meta tag to your theme’s header:
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=5.0">
This ensures:
- Content scales properly across devices
- Text is readable without needing to zoom
- Touch interactions function smoothly
- Accessibility guidelines are followed
Mobile-Friendly Buttons
Design buttons and other clickable elements with mobile users in mind. Follow these size recommendations to make tapping easy and accurate:
| Element | Recommended Size | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Primary CTAs | Minimum 48px height | Easy access for key actions |
| Navigation menu items | Minimum 44px height | Comfortable finger navigation |
| Form buttons | 44px x 44px minimum | Prevent mis-taps during checkout |
| Product option selectors | Minimum 40px height | Simplifies variant selection |
Keep at least 8px of space between interactive elements to avoid accidental taps. Place important buttons like “Add to Cart” and “Checkout” in the lower half of the screen, where they’re easier to reach with one hand.
On product pages, make sure the “Buy Now” or “Add to Cart” button stays visible without scrolling. Using a sticky position for these buttons can improve mobile conversion rates by keeping purchase options always accessible.
Mobile Content Guidelines
To effectively engage mobile users, your content needs to be tailored for smaller screens. For Shopify Plus stores, this means content that’s sharp, concise, and easy to navigate.
Mobile shoppers expect quick, scannable information. This requires a different approach compared to desktop content.
Short, Clear Text
Keep product descriptions short and to the point, using 2-3 sentence paragraphs. Focus on direct, simple language to highlight key features and benefits.
For product titles, aim for 50-60 characters to ensure proper display on mobile screens. Use subheadings to break down complex details.
| Content Type | Recommended Length | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Product titles | 50-60 characters | “Organic Cotton Crew Neck T-Shirt – Navy” |
| Meta descriptions | 120-135 characters | “Shop our premium organic cotton tees. Available in 6 colours. Free shipping Australia-wide on orders over $100.” |
| Product descriptions | 300-400 characters per paragraph | Focus each paragraph on a single feature or benefit. |
Text Structure
Organise your content with a clear hierarchy to help users find information quickly:
- Use descriptive H2 and H3 headings to divide content effectively.
- Prioritise important details like pricing and availability at the top.
- Use bullet points sparingly to highlight key features.
For collection pages, place sorting options and filters at the top so shoppers can refine their search easily. Ensure the most important details are front-loaded to grab attention.
Text Display Settings
| Element | Recommended Size | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Body text | 16px minimum | Ensures readability without zooming |
| Headings | 20-24px | Establishes a clear content hierarchy |
| Line height | 1.5 | Improves readability on mobile devices |
| Letter spacing | 0.5px | Prevents text from feeling cramped |
Keep line lengths to a maximum of 75 characters for comfortable reading. Use high-contrast colours for text, ensuring a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1 to meet accessibility standards.
Adjust your theme’s CSS to automatically scale font sizes based on screen width. This ensures text remains readable across all mobile devices, eliminating the need for manual zooming.
These content guidelines work hand-in-hand with your mobile design to create a seamless and engaging user experience.
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Mobile User Experience Tips
Once you’ve nailed mobile design and content strategies, it’s time to focus on user experience elements that encourage conversions. A great mobile UX not only makes shopping smoother but also helps boost sales.
Simple Forms and Checkout
Make checkout as easy as possible by cutting down on unnecessary steps. Here’s how to simplify the process:
- Use input-specific keyboards (e.g., numeric for phone numbers, email for email fields).
- Enable browser autofill for shipping and billing information.
- Add real-time validation to show users if they’ve made errors while filling out forms.
- Include clear progress indicators, so users know how far along they are in the checkout process.
Mobile Menu Design
A well-designed mobile menu makes navigation effortless. Keep it clean and functional by:
- Using a hamburger menu to save screen space.
- Limiting the main menu to essential categories.
- Including a prominent search bar for quick access.
- Highlighting active menu items for clarity.
- Ensuring touch targets are large enough for easy tapping.
These tweaks work hand-in-hand with earlier mobile design principles to create a user-friendly experience.
Product Page Scrolling
Product pages should feel effortless to browse. To keep users engaged:
- Optimise page load times so content appears quickly and smoothly.
- Enable swipe gestures for browsing through product galleries.
- Present key product details in a concise format, with expandable sections for more information.
These adjustments make browsing and shopping on mobile devices much more enjoyable.
Mobile SEO Measurement
Mobile Analytics Setup
Set up GA4 to track key mobile metrics:
- Create custom mobile reports to monitor bounce rate, session duration, and conversions.
- Enable enhanced ecommerce tracking to measure mobile purchases.
- Define custom events for actions like “Add to Cart” and checkout steps.
Connect GA4 to your Shopify Plus store through Google Tag Manager. Use these metrics to evaluate how mobile interactions affect your search rankings.
Search Rank Tracking
Use Google Search Console to analyse your mobile search performance:
- Check mobile-specific search rankings for your target keywords.
- Track click-through rates from mobile search results.
- Identify and resolve mobile crawl errors and indexing problems.
- Monitor Core Web Vitals for mobile devices.
Build a custom dashboard to track weekly changes in your mobile search rankings. Focus on metrics that directly influence visibility and organic traffic. These insights work hand-in-hand with your performance testing efforts.
Device Testing Guide
Consistent testing across devices helps maintain optimal performance. Here’s how to do it:
1. Cross-device Testing
Use Chrome DevTools‘ Device Mode to simulate your store on popular mobile devices:
- iPhone models (13, 14, 15 series)
- Samsung Galaxy devices
- iPads and Android tablets
2. Real Device Testing
Test critical features like checkout, payments, forms, and touch interactions on actual devices.
3. Automated Testing
Leverage tools like:
- Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test
- PageSpeed Insights for mobile performance analysis
- Lighthouse for detailed mobile audits
Next Steps
Main Points Review
Here are the key areas to focus on for improving mobile SEO:
- Performance Metrics: Keep an eye on Core Web Vitals using Google Search Console and aim for PageSpeed scores of 90 or higher.
- Analytics Integration: Use GA4 with enhanced ecommerce tracking to analyse mobile user behaviour and track conversions.
- Testing Protocol: Regularly test on both simulated and real devices to ensure consistent performance.
If you’re looking for expert guidance to implement these strategies, keep reading.
Get Help from Alinga
While these strategies are a great starting point, having expert support can help take your mobile SEO efforts to the next level. Mobile SEO isn’t a one-and-done task – it requires continuous attention to keep up with the evolving mobile commerce landscape. With mobile commerce driving online retail, partnering with experts can help you unlock your store’s full potential.
Alinga’s Support & Success team offers tailored mobile SEO solutions specifically for Shopify Plus stores in Gold Coast, Brisbane, and beyond. Their services include Shopify Plus development, mobile-first design, SEO optimisation, and ongoing performance tracking.
“We use proven strategies, tailored design, & innovative technologies to make beautiful and conversion optimised eCommerce experiences on Shopify Plus.” – Alinga
With Shopify Plus merchants experiencing 126% year-over-year growth, professional mobile SEO optimisation is more important than ever. Alinga’s support and success retainer program gives you priority access to Shopify experts who can help maintain and improve your mobile SEO efforts.
Make sure to track the impact of every change through your analytics dashboard to stay ahead in today’s mobile-driven market.
Are you thinking about transitioning to Shopify? Alinga makes transferring effortless, safe, and easy. We manage every aspect, from data and product transfers to design copy and SEO maintenance, so your store operates seamlessly. Don’t allow your fear of technology to restrict you. You can have confidence in Alinga to offer an effortless transition to Shopify and to prepare your business for significant growth. To start the transformation, contact us right away!
