Why is Mobile Website Optimization Crucial for Your Business?

How often do you browse the internet on your smartphone?

Chances are, the answer is ‘a lot’. Research shows smartphone-users spend just over three hours a dayon their device on average, accounting for over half of their overall consumption of digital content.

It’s been a few years since Google confirmed mobile searches were overtaking those performed on a desktop, and this just keeps growing. It’s no longer an option for businesses to ignore how their website performs on smartphones and tablets — every single company must take this into account to stay relevant.

Mobile optimization must be part of your digital marketing strategy: an effective SEO campaign will help your customers enjoy a smoother, more intuitive experience on their mobile devices.

Harnessing the Power of Mobile Search

Browsing a website on your phone is natural for most of us now. The prospect of having to set up your laptop or even sit at your desktop to look something up online feels quite alien.

Now, if we want to know what movies are showing at the local theatre, how the Maple Leafs did in their last game or where you can find a great pizza at the end of a night’s bar-hopping, we just reach for our phone.

But any website that feels clunky or fails to load properly on said device will only inspire frustration. It’s likely you’ll just click back to the search engine results page and find the next best site. In fact, 40 percent of consumers will turnto a competitor’s websitefollowing a negative mobile experience.

You can’t afford to risk this. Taking steps to optimize your website for mobile devices is paramount: competing with other businesses can be difficult enough — don’t give existing and prospective customers any reason to go elsewhere.

55 percent of all conversions leading to a purchase take place within just one hour of an initial mobile search. Furthermore, brands with mobile-optimized websites increase their chances of boosting their mobile conversion rate to 5 percent or above.

Key Factors in Mobile Website Optimization

So, now that we’ve established how important a mobile-optimized website is, what are the most important elements?

Get Your Text Right

Few things are more annoying for mobile users than having to constantly zoom in or out to read text properly.

Responsive mobile websites scale text automatically to suit the device being used: that means no zooming, no rotating the phone. Just a convenient, user-friendly format.

This is ideal if the user is in a hurry and needs answers within seconds. You have to value your customers’ time as much as they do.

On the topic of text, mobile websites should keep content streamlined and easy to digest. Any visitor confronted by a wall of words is likely to just scroll down to the find the information they’re looking for anyway or just go elsewhere.

Pages Must Load Fast

Remember above, when we said how you should value your customers’ time? That’s just as important when discussing load times.

We’ve all experienced the irritation of pages taking too long to load. You sit and watch while one image appears at a time, or a video seems to buffer for hours. It doesn’t exactly make your browsing experience enjoyable, and this only gets worse if a business has already done something to raise your hackles.

Research by Google revealed 70 percent of pages take seven secondsto load fully, which is problematic considering the probability of visitors leaving increases 106 percent for load times of up to six seconds. That grows to 123 percent for load times beyond 10 seconds.

It’s essential to prevent bloat on your mobile pages as much as possible to deliver a satisfying experience.

Keep Your Visuals Visible

Following on from load times, visual content is a major cause of slowing web pages down. Videos and images which are too big will either take too long to appear in full or fail to display at all.

Videos and pictures should be visible on all mobile devices and be able to load quickly. Your mobile site will seem unprofessional and poorly-designed if users are left struggling to make sense of your visuals.

Interaction should be Easy

Visitors to your mobile site should be able to interact with it and navigate pages as easily as they would on their computer. Menus must be logical and clear, buttons must be clickable without having to zoom in and forms must be simple to complete.

Interacting with websites may seem easier on desktops because you have a mouse, a cursor and a larger screen to leverage. But a well-optimized mobile site is just as user-friendly, regardless of the device it’s used on.

Buttons (especially CTAs) should be easy to tap with one finger. If buttons are clustered together, visitors may end up choosing the wrong option — potentially taking an action they don’t want to. This can lead to big mistakes, such as if your site offers one-click purchases.

Dropdown menus deserve careful attention too: users need to scroll through the options smoothly and accurately.

Reduce Pop-up Advertising

Pop-up ads have the power to make mobile sites slower and less user-friendly. Customers could be on the verge of taking an action — such as making a purchase — only for their screen to be filled with a request to sign up for your newsletter or to buy the product they were about to anyway.

Not only would this delay a positive action, it could feel intrusive and prompt the prospect to think twice. While pop-ups are a helpful feature, their presence on mobile sites should be reduced for smoother performance.

Conclusion

Mobile websites are an essential part of any business’s online presence. Customers want a fast, convenient way to find the products, services or information they need — and if they can’t get it from you, they’ll get it from someone else.

Reputation Mart’s team of SEO experts can help your website provide a stronger user experience on all devices. Want to learn more? Just get in touch now!

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