Your website on a phone: where customers drop out

The phone is your shop window

More than half of web traffic in the Netherlands comes from a phone: 54.69% according to Statcounter in August 2026. For a local business it's often even more. Someone is standing at a closed door, has just had a leak, or is looking for a hairdresser on the sofa in the evening.

At the same time, plenty is still decided on a computer. According to Thuiswinkel, 46% of online purchases in the first half of 2025 went through desktop, against 40% through mobile. So your site has to work on both. But on the phone the design is tightest, and it goes wrong most often.

One column, text first

On a phone, every section sits in one column. And the text comes before the image. A big photo at the top of every section pushes your message out of view, and a visitor then sees screen after screen of pictures without knowing why.

The exception: when your work is the product, as with a photographer or an interior builder. Then the image can come first, as long as the heading and button stay on the first screen.

Everything must be easy to hit

A fingertip is 1.6 to 2 centimetres wide. Buttons and links that are smaller get missed. Nielsen Norman Group therefore advises at least 1 by 1 centimetre for everything you tap, with space in between. The accessibility guidelines (WCAG 2.2) set the minimum at 24 by 24 pixels.

Check especially:

• Your phone number. Is it a link that calls straight away? A number people have to type over costs you calls.
• Links in your footer, which are often tiny and close together.
• Radio buttons and checkboxes in your form.

A fixed bar at the bottom

Many people use their phone with one hand. In Steven Hoober's observations, 49% held the phone in one hand, 36% held it in one hand while tapping with the other, and 15% used two hands. A big button at the bottom of the screen is easy to reach.

A fixed bar at the bottom works well for that reason, with at most two actions. A physiotherapist: "Book | Call". A moving company: "Quote | WhatsApp us". Two rules:

• The bar disappears as soon as a form or keyboard is open.
• It's slim. A bar that fills a quarter of the screen makes your site smaller.

A menu people can find

A menu behind three lines gets used less than you'd think. In Nielsen Norman Group research, hidden navigation on mobile was used in 57% of cases, against 86% when the navigation was visible.

So do this: keep your main button and one to three links visible, such as Services, Prices and Contact. Put the rest behind a button with the word "Menu" on it, not just three lines. If you only have four links or fewer, simply show them all.

Speed

On a phone, outside, with patchy signal, you feel every second. Google measures three things, and your site passes if:

• the main image is visible within 2.5 seconds (LCP),
• a tap responds within 200 milliseconds (INP),
• nothing jumps around while loading (CLS of 0.1 or less).

Vodafone showed that it matters: loading the main image 31% faster brought 8% more sales. The most important thing you can do yourself: one well-compressed image at the top (AVIF or WebP), at most two fonts, and chat widgets and other scripts loading last.

What's extra annoying on a phone

• A pop-up covering the page, or a chat that opens by itself.
• A video that starts by itself and uses data.
• Text smaller than 16 pixels, or grey on grey.
• Tables that scroll sideways. Stack pricing packages under each other.
• Form fields without the right type. A phone number field should open the number keypad.

Test it yourself

Take your own phone. Turn off wifi so you're on 4G. Open your site with one hand and try three things: calling your business, requesting a quote and finding your opening hours. If something doesn't work in a few taps, it doesn't work for your customers either.

In short

• One column, text before image, heading and button on the first screen.
• Everything you tap at least 1 by 1 centimetre, phone numbers as call buttons.
• A slim fixed bar at the bottom with at most two actions.
• A visible "Menu" button and a site that loads within 2.5 seconds.

Every site we build is designed for the phone first. This is how website design at Webclouds works.