The Nonprofit Website Insider

Issue 35: 👠📱 Walk a mile on your mobile site

Seeing your website through your visitors’ eyes (on their mobile phone), and a webinar on better content

Dear website champions,

Those of us working on nonprofit websites typically spend our days at desks, staring at large monitors. But that's likely not how your visitors experience your site.

Unless your primary audience consists of office workers (like staff at businesses, government agencies, or other nonprofits), chances are they're accessing your site primarily on mobile. And it can be eye-opening to shift your perspective by viewing your website on a phone instead.

What should this mean to you?

  • First, make sure of the basics. Does your website generally look good on a phone? There’s many reasons this is a good idea: Your visitors won’t find you nearly as credible if you don’t have a solid mobile site. Google also prioritizes mobile-optimized sites for SEO.

  • Get in the habit of using your own site on your phone. A lot of us look at our own website multiple times per day. If you get in the habit of using your phone to do that, it can help you find a lot of the same issues your users might stumble across.

  • Shrink your browser window as a quick check. If it feels like too much trouble to use your actual phone each time, you can also get a sense of what it might look like by simply shrinking your browser window horizontally until it won't shrink anymore. That's not a perfect representation of a phone (there could be additional problems on an actual phone) but it's a lot better than not considering mobile at all.

  • Test with mobile emulators for greater insights. If you want to go further, you can test on multiple phones, or with a "mobile emulator." An emulator is a desktop tool that shows how your site will look on particular phones. BrowserStack is a particularly well-known one (with limited free features), but there's a whole lot of them now.

  • Avoid PDFs whenever possible. A link to a PDF is a jarring experience for someone on mobile: it jumps them to what looks like a different place, with tiny text, and no good way to navigate around to read the text.This is one of my biggest pet peeve – and as the NHS guide below explains, it might even be breaking accessibility laws!

Ultimately, your website isn't just a desktop experience—it's increasingly a small-screen interaction happening on-the-go, in waiting rooms, during commutes, and while scrolling with a comfort TV show playing in the background (we all do it!). So when you shift your perspective to mobile-first thinking, you're preparing for what is likely the primary way most people experience your organization online.

A typical mobile desktop split for a public facing audience, as shown in a Google Analytics report

Thinking outside the desktop box,

Laura

A typical mobile/ desktop split for a public facing audience, as shown in a Google Analytics report

Dive Deeper

75+ mobile surfing stats on internet traffic from mobile devices | Thrive Agency

This eye-opening statistical roundup from Thrive Agency confirms just how dominant mobile has become: 95.8% of internet users access content via mobile phones, mobile devices generate 58.33% of all website traffic, and perhaps most striking: 73.1% of web designers identify non-responsive design as the leading cause of visitors abandoning websites. This article gives you the stats you need to make a clear business case for prioritizing mobile optimization.

PDFs and other non-html documents | NHS Digital Service Manual

The NHS Digital Service Manual explains why PDFs fail mobile users and violate accessibility requirements. PDFs open as awkward-to-navigate documents on small screens, causing frustration with tiny text and difficult scrolling. The guide recommends using structured HTML pages instead, noting that "You may be breaking the law if you publish a PDF without an accessible version." Additional ammunition in my ongoing campaign against PDF overuse!

Upcoming Webinar

How Web Visitors Digest Complex Information (30 min) 

Wed, May 21st, 2025 at 12-12:30 PM Eastern Time

Decades of research show that people approach complex information online completely differently than in print. Online readers scan rather than read, prioritize concise information, and navigate content in non-linear ways. In this webinar, we’ll walk through what you need to know and how it can help you write better website content.

This webinar will be useful not only for those who are in charge of websites, but to pass along to subject matter experts, technical staff, or anyone who tends to create content that's rich in information but challenging for online audiences.