Guide · Mobile
Passing the test
is not the same as working.
Of the 27,080 working business websites we opened across the GTA, 626 have no mobile layout at all — a small share, and the obvious failure. The more common problem is a site that technically has one and is still painful to use.
Published 2026-09-24 · Formory Group
The obvious failure, and why owners miss it.
A desktop-only page loaded on a phone renders at about a third of its intended size. The text is illegible, the navigation needs pinching and the phone number is too small to tap. Nothing warns the owner, because the owner looks at the site on the desktop where it was built.
This is now the minority case in our data, which makes it worth checking precisely because nobody expects to find it.
The common failure: technically responsive, practically awful.
Text at twelve pixels because the desktop design shrank proportionally. Buttons too close together to hit reliably. A menu hidden behind an icon that opens over the content and cannot be closed. A cookie banner covering the phone number.
None of these fail an automated mobile test. All of them lose enquiries, and all of them are obvious within ten seconds of using the site on an actual phone.
What to check, on your own phone, on mobile data.
Not the office wifi — mobile data, because that is the condition your customers are in. Can you read the first paragraph without zooming? Can you tap the phone number first time? Is what the business does visible before you scroll? Does anything move under your thumb while the page settles?
Four questions, ten seconds, and they find more real problems than any testing tool.
Parity matters more than people realise.
Google indexes the mobile version of a page as the primary version. Content dropped from the mobile layout to save space — fewer sections, less text, no reviews — is content that may not be counted at all.
If a phone visitor sees less than a desktop visitor, that lesser version is the one being judged. The right answer is to shorten the page for everyone rather than to hide parts of it from phones.
What fixing it involves.
On a maintained platform with a modern theme, a mobile layout is usually a theme change and costs very little. On a page built before responsive design was normal, the structure fights it, and rebuilding costs less than repairing.
The order to fix in is the order a visitor meets them: readable text, tappable contact, nothing jumping, then the rest.
Questions
What people ask us.
My site passes Google's mobile test. Is it fine?
It means nothing structural is broken. It says nothing about whether the text is readable or the buttons are hittable, which is what visitors actually experience.
Should I have a separate mobile site?
No. One responsive site is simpler, avoids the two versions drifting apart, and is what search engines expect.
How much of my traffic is mobile?
For most local businesses, the clear majority — and higher still for urgent services. Your own analytics will say, and the number usually surprises owners.
Your turn
Same check,
run on your site.
The check behind this page is the one we ran on every business above. Put your own address in and it will load your site on a phone screen, look at the certificate and the page age, and tell you what a visitor meets. No email, nothing stored.
Think yours needs
rebuilding?
Send us the address and what you do. We will look at what is there and tell you whether a rebuild is worth the money, or whether the problem is somewhere else entirely.