How to Test Your Website to See if it’s Mobile-Friendly

A website that adjusts itself to fit completely on the screens of various mobile devices is called a mobile-friendly website. It’s also described in web design circles as being a “fully responsive website”.

You don’t have to use an actual mobile device such as a mobile phone or a table to see if your website is mobile-friendly.

Even if you don’t have ready access to the a wide variety of mobile devices covering all of the screen dimensions available on the market, you can still test to see if your website is mobile-friendly using tools available on your desktop.

Modern web browsers come with developer tools allowing them to emulate mobile devices of various sizes. Here are the ways to test if your website is mobile-friendly or fully responsive:

Apple Safari

  1. Open a new window in the latest version of Safari.

  2. From the Develop menu, select Enter Responsive Design Mode.

    (If you do not have a Develop menu, go to Preferences > Advanced and select the checkbox labeled 'Show Develop menu in menu bar', then close the Preferences window and proceed with the above.)

  3. Enter the full URL of the page you’d like to test into the web address bar.

Google Chrome

  1. Open a new window in the latest version of Chrome.

  2. From the View menu, select Developer > Developer Tools.

  3. Enter the full URL of the page you wish to visit into the web address bar.

  4. In the Developer Tools panel, click the Toggle device mode icon, which looks like a mobile phone.

Microsoft Internet Explorer

  1. Open a new window in the latest version of Internet Explorer.

  2. Press the <F12> key to show the developer toolbar.

  3. Enter the full URL of the page you wish to visit into the web address bar.

Mozilla Firefox

  1. Open a new window in the latest version of Firefox.

  2. From the Tools menu, select Web Developer > Responsive Design View.

  3. Enter the full URL of the page you wish to visit into the web address bar.