6 Best WordPress Themes and Plugins for Mobile

Whether you’re a newbie building your first site or a masterful WordPress wizard, you may still struggle to make your website mobile-friendly. If your site doesn’t load well or format properly for smartphones and tablets, you could lose out on tons of potential page visitors. To ensure that you’re staying competitive in an online market, use these WordPress themes and plugins that optimize your site for mobile use.

Mobile Pro – $25

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Image via Flickr by innovate360

This WordPress theme works well on both tablets and smartphones. Amazingly, it actually reorganizes its layout and components to adjust to the screen size of the device being used. That keeps all information, menus, and links well-organized and easy to read, even on smaller devices and regular laptop and desktop screens. It takes advantage of expandable and collapsible sections to keep site visitors from having to scroll down for long periods of time to reach the information they need. Even images are resized and posted as thumbnails to save space without sacrificing your design.

Side – $25

If you really want your website to pop on a mobile screen, consider using the Side WordPress theme. It’s optimized for use with iPhone’s 4 beautiful 4.7-inch retina display, offering sharp, colorful photos and designs. However, it’s still compatible with other screen types and sizes. If you’re surfing the Web on your Nexus, though, you’ll need to make sure your site looks good on its larger 6-inch Quad HD display. Using Side ensures that your site’s meticulous graphic design is preserved, no matter what the screen size. There are tons of color palettes and retina icons from which to choose, all of which add striking visual interest and make any website built with Side grab visitors’ attention.

WPAppTouch ā€“ Free

Most mobile themes aren’t free, making WPAppTouch an incredible deal for developers. It works by detecting the device and optimizing the layout for each screen. The design focuses on headlines and stories, so it’s become a favorite mobile theme among bloggers and news sites. The theme also includes easy buttons at the bottom for browsing categories and searching for specific content. It’s also one of the faster mobile apps out there, so consider this option if responsiveness is a priority for your site.

WPtouch ā€“ Free or $49

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Image via Flickr by pabak sarkar

If you want a fast, simple solution for mobile optimization, WPtouch is an excellent option. This takes your WordPress site and displays it perfectly for mobile. The user-friendly layout offers a great mix of headlines and photos that is easy and fun to explore. In the free version, you can customize tons of elements, including typography, color palettes, and language detection. Plus, you can add custom links to the social media footer at the bottom of the display. You’ll get even more if you upgrade to a pro version, including security updates and cloud storage.

Swell – $69

If you want to prioritize photos and galleries for mobile devices, take a look at Swell. This responsive WordPress theme offers a minimalist aesthetic that’s extremely mobile-friendly. And unlike many other themes, it makes it easy to view photos and slideshows on a mobile device. Perfect for photographers, designers, and other creatives who want to showcase their work, Swell has a crisp, clean look that places the focus on featured images. It has simple templates for portfolios and also merits seamless infinite scrolling.

WP Mobile Detector – Free

If your reader base is comprised of all kinds of mobile and desktop users, WP Mobile Detector is a great fit for your needs. It is fully compatible with more than 5,000 mobile phones and formats the content automatically for each reader. It even works with standard mobile phones in addition to smartphones. This plugin features seven pre-installed mobile themes from which to choose, all of which resize images and automatically format content for optimized viewing. Best of all, it’s easy to use even if you’re no computer whiz. Just install and activate the plugin and WP Mobile Detector takes care of the rest.

Don’t miss out on potential hits by having a site that’s unpleasant to peruse on a smartphone or tablet. Make sure your site visitors can enjoy all your content by using one of these themes or plugins for mobile optimization.