Google Mobile Friendly Test Page Width

[kevinburke]

Hi Xara Users,

I use Google Ads to promote my website and nearly all the site visits come from that source, so I have to follow the Google discipline as strange as it is. My Xara site has one variant with a 480 pixel wide adaptive breakpoint, that seemed to be the max size I could get to pass the Google Mobile Friendly test, a year ago anyway. The main site displays perfectly in hi-res tablets including iPad mini, I check it on the mobile device emulators and it's fine in any tablet device or common phone in landscape mode. My main site isn't so wide at 960 pixels and I don't need giant hero photos spreading out over the entire monitor space, but I need more than 480 pixels which is too small to show useful content.

However, when I make a simple HTML5 responsive landing page with a 960px wide photo, it passes the mobile friendly test no problem so why can't the Xara variant pass it with a 960px photo? I think that Google mobile test is pretty silly, it seems to use an older small phone in portrait mode doing the test, when anybody would turn their phone to landscape to view photos . . . . or buy a newer phone with a larger screen. Now Google is indexing first my mobile site (the 480 variant) and that content needs to be the same as what it finds on the main site, but that's not possible with such restricted screen space. Any ideas to resolve this strange situation?

Website address is https://www.keyrealestate.eu and all feedback is gratefully accepted . . . . and more so if you buy a house!

I really want to figure this out so I can make a decision to renew my XDP subscription or jump into another web development program, I'm very happy with XDP and want to remain with it but I have to satisfy the strange demands of Mr. Google.

Cheers, Kevin

[gwpriester]

480 seems to work well for mobile phones. And the format needs to be simplified to work at that size.

I looked at your site on my iPhone X which is a middle size screen and it works fine. The landing page is a little weird as clearly you intend for visitors to view in landscape. Maybe some graphic that invites visitors to view the size in landscape mode would help.

I would buy a house or maybe two or three, if I had that kind of money. I don't.

[pauland]

The main site displays perfectly in hi-res tablets

I'd look at supplying retina versions (@2x) of the images that you are using. The images don't look as sharp as they should on hi-res screens.

[Egg Bramhill]

Kevin,

Your site appears to be a a mixture of Xara generated pages with other pages created in another program. With the Main site set at 960px and the mobile variant set to 480px the default breakpoint is 720px browser width. When creating a site with a mobile variant Xara creates two independant sized images of the same image, one for the Main site & one for the Mobile variant. Your mixed Xara/Non Xara site uses only one 960px image, no smaller one apart from the mobile landing page.

Xara created sites using Xara alone appear to keep Google resonably happy re mobiles, so I believe your problem is being created by the mixed design content. Personally I don't believe Xara is the ideal platform to create your site, a cms one would be better. I also don't believe you should be 'encouraging' visitors re mobile orientation.

For the above advice I expect you to donate a property gratis for use as a timeshare of TG members

[kevinburke]

Hi GW, Paul and Egg,

Thanks to all of you for your replies and useful comments and suggestions all well received. I need to digest it all and experiment with some ideas and will surely have more questions before I come up with a solution.

I did make an error in my post saying that the main (non-variant) site displays fine in a common (sized) mobile phone, but maybe that's not always true, what is displaying is the 480px variant with empty space on either side; looks like the mobile variant is using only 75% of my iPhone 6+ screen width in landscape mode. I suppose what I'm expecting is some degree of responsiveness up to the variant's adaptive breakpoint to utilize that empty space, but maybe it's not possible.

GW - I'm presuming that you tested in your iPhone X and saw the simple 480px mobile variant, or were you seeing that special mobile slider site that the link leads to? That mobile slider is a temporary trick to get around Google mobile friendly restrictions, in Google Ads I can direct clicks to any location on the domain and there they can see 960px wide house photos that look pretty good and this slider passes the mobile friendly test as it's responsive and scrunches right down to what the test demands.

Paul -- You're right I should use retina images, I need to put more effort into that because tablet visitors seem to spend the most time on-site looking at houses, quite a bit more than mobile visitors. A good quality photo looks impressive on the retina tablets, for sure.

Egg -- Thanks for looking into this site, the scale factors between Xara pixels and mobile screen pixels is what befuddles me. The other pages or code on the main non-variant site must a slider (Jssor.com) of houses in an iframe, everything else is pure Xara I think. But isn't that just one line of iframe code? Yes I'm going to look into a simple alternative for a landing page, maybe one of the Bootstrap desktop programs and yes simplify the layout of the main site so it looks good in mobile and still sufficiently complete on desktop and tablets. I just don't see any news from Xara regarding new web development features so I'm sort of worried. It is super at vector graphics and desktop publishing, both handy to me but I need to tackle the Google situation as that's where the client contacts come from, a few from Bing and Yahoo but not enough.

Google is all excited about mobile phone users but I'm really wondering how many people are doing serious research to decide on a milion+ euro house only with a phone? Maybe they start the initial research on a phone but they're going to get into details and comparisons on a tablet or desktop, but I have to satisfy them all just in case.

Hey, I'm looking at my listings to find the right Barcelona coast mansion to send you guys for holiday, something that's sitting empty up in the hills with a great seaview, large wine cellar and big swimming pool . . . . . and a place where the cops don't ever go so you can get out of control and make all the noise you want to!!! Just don't break too much as I might have to show the place one day!

Thanks again, Cheers,
Kevin

[pauland]

Hi GW, Paul and Egg,

---

Google is all excited about mobile phone users but I'm really wondering how many people are doing serious research to decide on a milion+ euro house only with a phone? Maybe they start the initial research on a phone but they're going to get into details and comparisons on a tablet or desktop, but I have to satisfy them all just in case.

That's why we have mobile variants. Your mobile site should be very different from the desktop one. The point is that the reason for the site at all is to get someone to get into contact, so for a small form factor remove everything that is not strictly required and and make pictures fill the screen.

Nobody is goint to buy a house from a phone or even a website, it's your job to sell the property after they get in contact.