There can be no doubt that more people than ever are using the internet whilst on the move, whether just to browse or to search with a purchase in mind. A report by Nielsen, commissioned by Google (2013) shows how searching on mobile tops going straight to websites:
Search statistics
Source: Google/Nielsen (2013)
This information is key for websites such as the Winehouse whose potential customers are looking for a local wine retailer but who don’t necessarily know the store. With the website optimised for search, and updated with no broken links or blank pages, it now becomes necessary to ensure that it can be used by people on the move.
My old school friend Carol Standing is a co-founder of mymobweb and can help create a fully mobile version of any commercial website, such as the Winehouse, which currently isn’t making the most of the potential mobile traffic. As Carol explains in her guide ‘The 10 Essentials of a Mobile Website’, you might be able to see your website on a mobile phone, but that doesn’t mean it is mobile friendly!
Carol’s guide lists these ten mobile site best practices to ensure mobility and a good experience for your customer:
- Design for visibility: don’t cause eye strain – use contrast between background and text, fit your contents to the screen size, try 3D effects and shadowing for buttons, allow negative space
- Be thumb friendly: large, centred buttons, pad check boxes and smaller buttons so even large hands can manage!
- Keep it quick: your site should load fast and be easy to read
- Listen, learn & iterate: use Google analytics to understand how your site is being used and collect feedback to continuously improve your site based on accurate research
- Simplify navigation: add search functionality, minimise scrolling, clear back and home buttons
- Make it easy to convert, i.e. easy for your customer to contact you or buy something
- Make it accessible – on all devices and at horizontal as well as vertical orientations
- Make it local: include maps, directions, use GPS and a store locator (the Google/Nielsen report (2013) found that 71% of users used a store locator and that 69% expect to find a store within 5 miles of their location or less)
- Make it seamless: allow carts to be saved and maintain key features of your site across all channels
- Use mobile site redirects which automatically send your customers to the mobile-friendly version of your website
Lee and Benbasat (2004) describe some of the constraints of having a small screen, such as lack of landmarks on such a limited space and an increased need for scrolling and clicking, and go on to explain that mobile interface design should ‘support the user ’s limited attention span and over-come inferior device constraints.’ Hoffman and Novak talked about ‘flow experience’ as long ago as 1996, and this idea is carried through today with many of Carol’s top tips concerning the design elements that should be considered and which reinforce these views.
Many of Carol’s tips also reinforce the findings of Zhou’s research (2011), which looked at perceived ease of use of mobile sites, perceived usefulness of such sites, and trust from the consumer. Combined, these elements make up customer satisfaction. Zhou concluded that ‘the constraints of mobile terminals have limited user adoption and usage of mobile sites.’ However, with this research being over five years old, and pre-dating the iPhone 6 and the boom of smartphones generally, I doubt this comment is still true today. In fact, the Google/Nielsen report (2013) found that ‘Consumers spend 15+ hours per week researching on their smartphone and on average visit mobile websites 6 times’ which would be difficult to achieve if their experience was being limited by their phone.
Smartphone usage
Source: Google/Nielsen (2013)
There are many sources of statistics for the savvy website owner who wants to monitor the latest trends in mobile to inform strategy. Many of these appear in Dave Chaffey’s Mobile Marketing Statistics Compilation which was last updated in April 2016. Google analytics has already been mentioned and is a powerful tool which can analyse many elements of your website traffic and assist with your strategy for, as Sidko (2016) explains: ‘Mobile audiences don’t engage with the content the same way as people using desktops. And so, your task is to monitor if your mobile users are as engaged with your content as the desktop ones.’
To sum up, the theory behind user-friendly mobile site design has been around for a very long time, and today’s marketers are still using these fundamental ideas to develop the websites of today. Pay attention to these concepts, monitor the usage by your customers, and adapt and update to keep them coming back for more.
References:
Chaffey, D. (2016). Mobile Marketing Statistics Compilation. [Online] <http://www.smartinsights.com/mobile-marketing/mobile-marketing-analytics/mobile-marketing-statistics/> [Accessed 2nd May 2016]
Google (2016) [Online] <http://www.google.com/analytics/#/small-business> [Accessed 27th March 2016]
Google/Nielsen. (2013) Mobile Path to Purchase: Five Key Findings. [Online] <https://ssl.gstatic.com/think/docs/mobile-path-to-purchase-5-key-findings_research-studies.pdf> [Accessed 27th March 2016]
Hoffman, D. L., and Novak, T. P. (1996). Marketing in Computer-Mediated Environments: Conceptual Foundations. Journal of Marketing. Vol. 60, pp 50 – 68
Lee, Y. E., and Benbasat, I. (2004). A Framework for the Study of Customer Interface Design for Mobile Commerce. International Journal of Electronic Commerce. Vol. 8, issue 3, pp 79 – 102
Mymobweb (2015). [Online] <https://www.linkedin.com/company/mymobweb> [Accessed 29th April 2016]
Sidko, A. (2016) <https://www.semrush.com/blog/how-to-use-google-analytics-to-improve-your-content-strategy/> [Accessed 27th March 2016]
Winehouse, The (2006). [Online] <http://www.thewinehouse.co.uk/> [Accessed repeatedly]
Zhou, T. (2011). Examining the critical success factors of mobile website adoption. Online Information Review. Vol. 35, no. 4, pp 636 – 652
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