Mobile Marketing is NOT the Future

It’s the right now!

73% of Canadians now own a smartphone with a data plan – that’s over 25 million Canadians actively searching for information with their mobile device! YouTube has confirmed that mobile now makes up 50% of its total site traffic. Is your website optimized?

Mobile adoption poses a massive opportunity for any business with an ecommerce site and even boasts advantages for businesses that don’t sell products online. Today I will discuss why you should be capitalizing on the progressive mobile trend and why it’s important to any business with an online presence.

Why are mobile users important?

Mobile users are reshaping the online landscape by defining how sites should operate, interact, and convey information. Mobile users have their phones at all times, remain connected to their social spheres, and use their device for fast information searches. This creates an environment that enables business to extend their connections with customers into essentially any location.

Advertisers have recognized this potential and mobile ad spend experienced a 76% increase from 2013-2014, making it the second largest online advertising sector.

What makes them different from desktop users?

Mobile users have distinctively different behaviour when compared to traditional desktop users. Mobile users consume information on the fly, distribute information throughout their social circles, and use mobile research to base their purchase decisions upon.

In the chart to the right, we can see that 26% of smartphone users in Canada used their mobile device to begin their purchase process, 20% used their device to evaluate products and 9% used their device throughout the entire journey. This is significant insight and certainly points to a shift in consumer preferences.

Do I really need a mobile site?

If the above reasons aren’t enough, let the data speak to it. Go into your Google Analytics account and review your historical mobile data and, as long as your site has adequate data, you should notice that overall mobile usage has increased incrementally over time.

But I don’t sell anything online – A common misconception. Even if your business is entirely brick and mortar, your website’s purpose is to aid customers through the purchase process by providing relevant information about the business, and product or service. Optimizing for mobile provides the opportunity for mobile users to learn more about your business on the fly, where if your site provided a poor experience, those potential customers may have been lost.

Furthermore, mobile site development and optimization will help you capture as much organic traffic as possible. If done correctly, you should see a decrease in mobile traffic bounce rate and increases in organic traffic and conversions.

Mobilize the Optimization

So, now that you’re sold on developing your site into a mobile traffic machine, let’s look at a few tips and tricks to get your site ready for mobile visitors.

Functionality – The number one frustration is poor site functionality for mobile devices. To counteract this, it is essential that you make your site responsive. Responsive design will alter the site’s appearance based on the display dimensions of the device used. Often, this simple fix will be enough to drastically improve mobile performance.

Images – It is common to see a banner image at the top of a website, often used for branding or subject matter on the page. In a mobile friendly site, this image will either have to be resized or visually altered to fit the display of a mobile device. Additionally, the actual size of the image file is an important consideration. A file 1mb in size for desktop users is not an issue; however, smartphones using data will notice longer load times for larger file sizes and often this extended load time can cause them to abandon the click or page.

Click to Call – As users are now accessing your mobile optimized site through their smartphones, adding a clickable phone number (click to call) can greatly improve phone conversions. Simply adding the click to call feature across all pages will ensure mobile users can easily contact your business.

Get Smart, Go Mobile!

Mobile growth will continue to boom in both the Canadian and global markets. Making your site functional and practical for mobile users will increase the overall user experience of your site and will result in increased conversion rates for your business. Begin by adopting the mobile as your primary website consideration and commit to the continual improvement of your site’s mobile experience.

Do you need advice on mobile optimization? Give us a shout, we’re here to help!