How Do I Check Whether My Website Is Mobile Friendly?
Test it on your own phone on mobile data, then in PageSpeed Insights. What to look for, what to fix first, and why office wifi hides the real problem.
A practical mobile check for a South African business website, and the faults it most often turns up.
TL;DR: Quick Answer
Test it on your own phone on mobile data, then in PageSpeed Insights. What to look for, what to fix first, and why office wifi hides the real problem.
Key takeaways
- Very cheap quotes (under R5,000) almost always exclude copywriting, SEO, custom design and post-launch support
- Professional copywriting can represent 20-35% of a total website project cost, and is worth it for search visibility
- On-page SEO built into the website at launch costs a fraction of what it costs to retrofit after the site is live
- Hosting, SSL, domain and maintenance add R3,000-R10,000 per year on top of build cost
- E-commerce adds significant cost due to payment gateway integrations, product data, security requirements and checkout UX
- Timeline and client responsiveness directly affect cost: slow feedback rounds extend agency hours
Two checks find almost everything. Open the site on your own phone, on mobile data, and try to complete an enquiry. Then run it through PageSpeed Insights and read the mobile tab.
Office wifi is the reason so many businesses believe their site is fine. Turn it off before you test.
The phone test
Do it as a customer would, from the beginning. Search for your business, click through, and try to actually contact yourself.
Watch for these while you do it:
Can you read the text without zooming? Body text under about 16 pixels is too small on a phone.
Can you tap the buttons without aiming? Tap targets should be at least 44 by 44 pixels with space around them. Links crowded together in a paragraph are a common failure.
Does anything scroll sideways? Horizontal scrolling on a phone almost always means a table, an image or an embed that is wider than the screen.
Does the form work? Does the right keyboard appear for email and number fields? Can you complete it one-handed?
Is the phone number tappable? It should dial when tapped, not require copying.
How long did it take to load? Count it. Over three seconds and you are losing people before they see anything.
The PageSpeed Insights test
Run your homepage and your busiest service page, and read the mobile tab only.
| Metric | Target | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Largest Contentful Paint | Under 2.5s | When the main content appears |
| Interaction to Next Paint | Under 200ms | How fast it responds to a tap |
| Cumulative Layout Shift | Under 0.1 | Content jumping while loading |
The top section of the report uses real Chrome user data, so it reflects what your actual visitors experienced rather than a simulation. That is the number to trust.
What Search Console adds
Open Search Console and look at the page experience and Core Web Vitals reporting. It groups your URLs by whether they pass, so you can see whether the problem is one template or the whole site.
A single failing template usually means one page type, such as your blog posts or your product pages, is dragging everything down and can be fixed once.
The faults that come up most
Uncompressed images. The single most common cause, and the cheapest to fix. A 3MB photograph displayed at 800 pixels wide costs seconds on mobile data. Resize, convert to WebP, compress.
Tables that do not fit. Put wide tables in a container that scrolls on its own rather than pushing the whole page sideways.
Pop-ups. An interstitial covering the content on mobile costs you visitors and is treated poorly by Google.
Text over images. Often unreadable at phone width even when it looks good on a desktop mock-up.
Menus that need precision. Multi-level dropdowns designed for a mouse are difficult with a thumb.
Heavy page builders. Sometimes the cause is structural, and no amount of image work fixes it.
Why this matters more here
Most South African web traffic arrives on a phone, frequently on mobile data rather than fixed broadband, and often on a mid-range device rather than a new one.
Google also indexes the mobile version of your site. If your mobile version hides content that the desktop version shows, the hidden content effectively does not exist for search.
So the mobile version is not a secondary consideration. It is the version that both your customers and Google actually see.
Fix in this order
Compress and resize images. Fix anything causing sideways scrolling. Make text and tap targets bigger. Remove or delay pop-ups. Then remeasure, because you want to know which change did what.
Juicy Designs builds mobile-first and tests on real devices. See web design and website maintenance. Related: mobile-first design and Core Web Vitals.
Frequently asked questions
How do I check whether my website is mobile friendly?
Open it on your own phone on mobile data, not office wifi, and try to complete an enquiry. Then run it through PageSpeed Insights on the mobile tab. Those two checks find almost everything that matters.
What should I be looking for?
Text you can read without zooming, buttons you can tap without precision, no sideways scrolling, forms that work with a phone keyboard, and a page that loads in under three seconds on mobile data.
Does Google still have a mobile-friendly test?
The standalone tool was retired, but the same data appears in PageSpeed Insights and in the Search Console page experience reporting. Both use real Chrome user data rather than a simulation.
Why does mobile matter so much in South Africa?
Most South African web traffic is on a phone, often on mobile data rather than fixed broadband. A site that is fine on office fibre can be unusable for the people actually trying to buy from you.
What is the most common mobile fault?
Uncompressed images. A single large photograph can add several seconds on mobile data, and it is usually the cheapest thing on the list to fix.