Mobile UX Makes a Major Impact on Traffic, Conversions & Sales
I’m hoping by now that everyone who reads this has a responsive website – by which I mean a website that automatically adjusts so it looks great and functions well on any sized device – mobile, tablet, laptop, desktop or wide screen.
If your site is not responsive, OMG! PUT THAT SANDWICH DOWN AND GET YOUR SITE REDESIGNED RIGHT NOW! You are literally missing more than half of your audience. According a recent Hitwise study, nearly 60% of all web searches are now mobile. And that number continues to rise.
Seriously. We need to talk immediately.
But even if you do have a responsive website, your mobile user experience may not be doing all it could be for your brand.
How is your site speed on mobile? Did you know that the number one reason people classify a mobile brand experience as negative is due to slow loading times? In fact, according to a Google study, 53% of mobile site visits are abandoned if pages take longer than three seconds to load. (THREE!)
And sadly, if you lose those customers, they may never come back. When people have a negative brand experience on mobile, they are over 60% less likely to purchase from that brand in the future.
Ever go to a restaurant and wait forever for your food to arrive? Are you likely to go back?
If that’s not bad enough, a slow site will also negatively impact SEO. Google has indicated that site speed is one of the factors used by its algorithm to rank pages. That means a slower site will have a lower search ranking, which means fewer people will find you in a search and less traffic will come to your site.
Optimizing your site for mobile is also imperative for your PPC campaigns. If someone clicks on your ad and goes to your website, they may bail before the site loads, which will wreck your conversion rates. Fifty-three percent of paid search clicks come from mobile devices. A bad mobile experience can result in a lot of wasted spend.
(Are you wasting money on PPC? Sign up for our free PPC Audit and find out.)
Can people quickly and easily find what they need? Does your site offer simple, streamlined navigation? A site search? While it is apparently an internet myth that people today have the attention span of a goldfish, users still aren’t going to spend a lot of time digging around for info on your site when they could be playing Candy Crush or buying shoes.
Keep in mind too that people are probably not going to want to scroll through pages and pages worth of copy. Text should be brief. Forms should have a minimum number of fields. Calls-to-action should be big and bold and easy to click on.
Everything should be designed around helping the user getting the helpful, relevant info they need with a minimum amount of clicks. Make sure your most popular content is promoted right on your homepage.
Is your site annoying people? Many sites today employ what are considered “interruptive” marketing tactics. You start to read something and all of a sudden, a full-size pop-up message or ad takes over your screen. Errrr. Forty-six percent of people say they would not purchase from a brand again if they had an interruptive mobile experience. So, if you are employing interruptive tactics, you might want to do some testing to ensure they aren’t doing more harm than good.
These are just a few of the factors that may be preventing your mobile experience from engaging and delighting your customers. We’d be happy to assess your mobile experience and recommend a strategy to help turn your mobile presence in to a traffic-driving, lead-generating, sales-making machine. Let’s Talk.
Diane Callihan
With more than 20 years of experience writing for some of the country’s top brands, Diane helped to shape Roger West’s content strategy, lead generation, and PR efforts as Director of Marketing. She currently serves as President of Callihan Content Creation.