Whatever your business, one of the most important digital marketing tactics that you can employ is mobile optimization.
Mobile optimization is the process of making a website easily accessible to mobile users. This involves using mobile-friendly web design, formatting, and content so that users can comfortably navigate a website from a mobile phone.
Optimization is so much more than making a website mobile-friendly, however. Where a mobile-friendly website may be functional on both a mobile phone and a laptop, a mobile-optimized website is especially designed using a mobile-first approach.
For instance, if you’ve visited a website that loads fine on your mobile phone but only looks like a desktop version on a smaller screen, you may describe it as mobile-friendly. It’s functional, but it doesn’t make for a particularly enjoyable experience, what with all the zooming in and out that’s required, scanning large chunks of text, or, worse, waiting forever for images to load.
A mobile-optimized website, on the other hand, is a breeze to navigate on a smaller mobile phone screen.
Why Mobile Optimization Matters
At a time when nobody likes to wait and everybody’s in a rush, a mobile-optimized website sounds nice. But can it give your business an actual advantage?
The answer is yes. Here’s why.
Your target market spends most of their time looking at their phone screens and using their phones to search for just about everything. Very few people open their laptops to search Google anymore.
In fact, according to Google, over 50% of web traffic comes from mobile.
In today’s digital landscape where every business needs an online front, your website is your best foot forward. Failing to capture your target market online by making it accessible, attractive, and convenient for mobile users is a huge lost opportunity.
Optimizing your website for mobile can also give your business the following benefits:
Makes Your Website More Responsive
Optimizing your website for mobile increases load speeds. This means your website opens in no time when a visitor clicks on it through channels like Google searches and social media. It also makes switching to and from different landing pages faster and easier.
On average, a wait time of longer than three seconds is all it takes for users to lose interest and go searching for a better-performing website.
When you’re trying to make it in a highly saturated industry, making sure that your website is responsive allows you to keep visitors interested and gives you an edge over your competition.
Boosts Conversion Rates
How quickly your website loads also directly impacts your conversion rates. Case in point: 43% of consumers do not return to a slow or clunky website.
Not only that–visitors that leave one poorly performing website end up in their competitors’ pages. This is crucial, especially if you take mobile user behavior into consideration.
Most people that search a product or service on the Internet using their mobile phones are ready to make a purchase. These are the searchers that use longer search phrases, location-specific queries, and time-sensitive options, such as “Italian restaurants open nearby”.
A website that isn’t optimized ends up suffering extremely high bounce rates that don’t just mean people checking out other pages instead. It means people are buying from their competition instead of from them.
Impacts Google Rankings
Websites that are optimized for mobile are much more efficiently indexed and crawled by Google bots. This in itself gives mobile-optimized websites an edge over those that aren’t, allowing them to rank higher on search results.
You can use Google’s mobile-friendly test to see whether Google deems your website usable on mobile. However, take note that this only tests for usability on a mobile device and doesn’t give insights on actual mobile user experience.
Creates Better User Experience
Users tend to spend more time on websites that are optimized for mobile because they load faster, are more responsive, and have a streamlined design. Users just don’t have the patience to wait for a clunky website to finish loading.
But apart from better browsing experience, optimized websites can also have real-time customer service functionality that allows businesses to interact with customers and better capture them for increased chances of conversion.
Increases User Engagement
The more time that users are willing to spend on your website, the higher the chances of them converting from visitors to buyers.
This kind of engagement begins with a website that enables users to navigate efficiently, access resources that they need, and make their way to the cart without distractions.
According to the same report by Google, 63% of mobile users purchase from companies whose websites offer them products or services that they need.
Optimizing your website for mobile users not only gives you the best response rates. It also allows you to effectively lead your visitors to resources that they will most likely want to purchase.
Tips for Optimizing Your Website for Mobile Devices
Now that we know just how much optimizing a website for mobile users affects business success, how do we make it happen?
Google recommends three self-check questions when optimizing for mobile, namely:
- Does my website load quickly?
- Is my website easy to navigate?
- Is it easy for users to take action?
Here are some tips you can employ when answering these questions:
Use Attention-Grabbing CTA Buttons
The main idea behind making your website mobile-friendly or mobile-optimized is to lead visitors to act. So don’t hide your CTAs in heavy layers of text. Make them easy to spot and clickable.
An easy way to do this is to use large CTA buttons that are attention-grabbing and easy to click.
Optimize Images
Always compress images. One of the best image formats for mobile browsing is PHP. It’s light while preserving image quality.
Another way to optimize images is to use Alt text. This is a description of your photos that includes targeted keywords.
Using bloated, uncompressed images can make an otherwise responsive website take too long to load.
Make Room for White Spaces
Make it easy for users to navigate your website by removing clutter and distractions. Make use of white spaces around items that you want to highlight or to simply make a page less intimidating to scan.
Tip: People typically avoid pages that are too text-heavy, so you might want to break up large chunks of text into bite-sized nuggets to make your pages more inviting.
Get Optimized with the Pros
If you don’t know where to begin when trying to optimize your website for mobile, there’s no better way than to get in touch with the pros.
With 25 years of experience in bridging brands and consumers, NGP-IMC can help you build a mobile-optimized website that effectively captures your audience and drives business success.
Get in touch with us today to find out how!
Jossaine Nunez is a freelance article writer, blogger, and SEO-driven maven. While her true passion lies in writing fiction, her love for storytelling extends to helping brands convey their message in ways that are both engaging and helpful for attaining their business goals.
Jossaine’s interests in writing particularly about people, for people – which translates to brand audience engagement – stems from her experience as the Editor-In-Chief of Siliman University’s The Weekly Silimanian, which published slices of life and educational pieces surrounding university life. Her piece, A Review of Leoncio Deriada’s People on Guerrero Street, published in the Silliman Journal on discussions and investigations in the humanities and sciences, earmarks her foray into the world of writing about, and writing for, humans that make the world go round.
