Mobile-Friendly Website Checklist for Singapore Businesses

A mobile-friendly website is one you can read, tap and complete on a phone without pinching, zooming or hunting for the button. The quickest way to find out is to open your own site on your own phone, on mobile data, and try to do what a customer would do: find your services, call you, WhatsApp you and send an enquiry. Anything that makes you sigh, squint or scroll sideways is costing you enquiries.

Why mobile comes first for a Singapore business

Think about how your own customers find a business. Someone stands at a bus stop, remembers the aircon is making a noise, and searches on their phone. A parent in the MRT looks up tuition centres. A homeowner scrolls through contractors on the sofa with one hand. In all of these cases the first look at your website happens on a small screen, often with patchy signal and half the person's attention.

We cannot give you a precise share of your visitors who are on phones, because it depends on your business. You can check your own number in your analytics tool; our guide on setting up website analytics shows how. For many local service businesses the answer is a clear majority, which is why a website that only looks good on a laptop is only half a website.

Google also looks at the mobile version of your pages when it decides how to understand and rank them, a practice it documents publicly as mobile-first indexing. That is a good reason to treat the phone version as the main version rather than an afterthought. We cannot promise any ranking from tidying up your mobile site, but a site that is awkward on a phone is difficult to defend either way.

Step 1: Test it the way a customer would

Before changing anything, see what a customer sees. Do this on your own phone rather than relying on a shrunken browser window on your computer, because real phones differ in screen size, browser and how they handle forms.

Repeat the test on a second phone if you can, such as an older Android model or a different browser. Owners often discover that something that works on their own iPhone breaks on a customer's device.

You can also use the free tools Google provides. Search Console's page experience and mobile usability reporting, and the free PageSpeed Insights tool at pagespeed.web.dev, will flag common problems. Treat their reports as a prompt to look closer, not as a verdict, because they test a snapshot of your page.

Step 2: Text, layout and tap targets

Text you can read without zooming

Body text that looks fine on a desktop can be tiny on a phone. As a practical rule of thumb, if you have to pinch to read a paragraph, the text is too small. Avoid long, dense blocks of copy. Break content into short paragraphs, use clear headings and keep line lengths comfortable. Light grey text on a white background looks stylish and is difficult to read outdoors in bright Singapore sunshine, so choose strong contrast (we cover this more in our website accessibility basics guide).

Layout that fits the screen

The page should fit the width of the screen with no sideways scrolling. If you have to swipe left and right to see the rest of a table or a photo, something has been built at a fixed desktop width. Menus should collapse into a clear menu button, and columns of content should stack into a single column on a phone.

Buttons and links you can hit with a thumb

Fingers are bigger than mouse pointers. Buttons and links need enough space around them that a thumb does not trigger the wrong one. A row of small text links packed together in the footer is a common offender. Leave generous space between tappable items, and make the main call-to-action buttons large and obvious.

Step 3: Call and WhatsApp buttons that work

For most Singapore service businesses, the call button and the WhatsApp button are the most important things on the page. They deserve their own check, because they break in surprising ways.

• The call button should open the dialler. A phone number written as plain text may not be tappable on every device. A proper telephone link opens the phone app with your number ready to call.
• The WhatsApp button should open a chat with you. Tap it on a phone that has WhatsApp installed, and on one that does not. Check the number includes the country code, and that a short pre-filled message makes sense. Our guide to adding a WhatsApp button to your website walks through the set-up.
• Keep them in reach. A button pinned near the bottom of the screen is easier for a thumb than one at the top of a long page. Do not let it cover important content or the cookie notice.
• Show the number as text too. Some people prefer to copy a number or read it to someone else.

Whichever way you contact customers, remember that speed of reply matters as much as the button. Our guide on reply speed for customer enquiries explains why a quick answer often decides who gets the job.

Step 4: Forms on a small keyboard

Typing on a phone is slow. A form that feels fine on a laptop can feel like a chore on a phone, and many people will not bother. The goal is to make it easy to send an enquiry while standing in a queue.

• Ask for less. Name, mobile number and a short message is enough for most enquiries. You can collect details later in the conversation.
• Use the right keyboard. A phone number field should bring up the number pad, and an email field should show the @ symbol. This is set in the form's code, and a good developer will do it by default.
• Label every field. Labels that sit above the field, rather than disappearing placeholder text, help people remember what they were asked.
• Show errors clearly. If something is wrong, say what and where, in plain words next to the field.
• Confirm it worked. After sending, show a clear thank-you message so nobody wonders whether to try again.
• Test delivery. Submit a real test enquiry and check that it arrives in your inbox. A form that looks fine but silently fails is one of the most expensive faults a small business can have.

If you collect personal details through a form, you also have obligations under Singapore's data protection rules. Our guide on PDPA for website owners covers the basics.

Step 5: Pop-ups, banners and things that get in the way

Pop-ups that work on a big screen can take over a whole phone. Newsletter boxes, discount offers, chat widgets and cookie notices all compete for a small amount of space. Open your site on a phone and count how many things appear on top of the content in the first ten seconds.

If you need a cookie notice, keep it brief and out of the way. Our guide on cookie consent for Singapore websites explains what to think about without turning the page into an obstacle course.

Step 6: Speed on mobile data

A page that loads quickly on office wi-fi can crawl on a busy mobile connection. Large photos are the usual cause. A photo straight from a modern phone can be several megabytes, far more than a web page needs. Resize and compress images before uploading, and avoid auto-playing videos on the first screen.

We go deeper in our guide to website speed for small businesses, and in Core Web Vitals explained, which covers the measures Google uses to describe loading and responsiveness.

Your complete mobile checklist

Print this, or keep it on your phone, and go through it once now and again after every major change to your site.

What to do next

Spend ten minutes today doing the test in Step 1 on your own phone. Write down the three things that annoyed you most and fix those first. If you would rather not do it yourself, our website development page explains how we build mobile-first sites, and our website launch checklist is a good companion for checking a site before it goes live. For a custom-designed, built and looked-after website, Website.sg starts at S$97 a month, with the domain bought separately in your own name.