Mobile Friendly Japanese Website

Smartphone Compatibility

More and more Japanese people are using mobile phones to access websites every year. In some industries, mobile users account for as much as 80% of all website visits.

Smartphone compatibility is particularly important for consumer-facing sites and companies targeting young audiences. That said, in today’s world, even companies targeting other businesses need smartphone-compatible sites. You never know when a potential client or job candidate is going to try to look you up with their phone.

No matter your website’s audience, smartphone compatibility is no longer optional.

 

Focus on three points for every mobile site we make:

• Smartphone-compatible sites should prioritize clarity of design and ease of use.
• Smartphone sites should be able to pass Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.
• Smartphone sites should be easy to find on Google Japan.

Google Japan and Smartphone Compatibility

Since 2016, Google has been using a new search algorithm that prioritizes smartphone-compatible websites in searches done using their mobile platform. Desktop-only sites are now ranked lower than mobile-friendly ones.

Mahana keeps close watch over each update to Google’s standards. All of our smartphone-compatible sites are designed to conform to every new rule.

 

Responsive Design

Mahana places a high priority on responsiveness.

What does that mean? It means your website will work for both desktop and mobile users.

There are two basic approaches that web designers use when creating a mobile site based on a desktop site.

One option is to create the smartphone-compatible site from the ground up with a totally original design suited for smartphones. The other option is to add code to the desktop site to force it to resize appropriately when viewed on a smartphone.

While both methods might produce identical looking mobile sites, the first option means the creation of two separate sites, while the second option means that only one site needs to be maintained. With the second option, webpages reformat themselves automatically when they detect that they are being viewed on a smartphone.

Try resizing your browser window right now.

As you shrink the browser window, at some point you should notice the layout and images change dramatically. This is what we mean by “responsive design.” Although this kind of design might require some special code, it reduces the load placed on host servers compared to having two separate sites. In addition, it also avoids any confusion that might be caused by potentially having two similar websites appear on search engine result pages. This is also the mobile site design methodology recommended by Google.