If you’ve noticed a drop in your mobile rankings, it’s not enough to just improve your mobile experience. You need to identify the specific problems you’re having. These are:
- Your site isn’t mobile responsive
- You haven’t optimized for mobile-first indexing
- Slow mobile pages
- Unfriendly navigation
- The page content isn’t immediately obvious
- You’re using popups/interstitials
- You haven’t optimized your CTAs for mobile
- Clickable elements aren’t optimized for touch
- Your mobile forms are killing conversions
Prioritize mobile optimization to keep up with web traffic demands. Google updates algorithms to preference websites with a strong mobile experience.
1. You’re not using responsive design If your website isn’t designed responsively, it will appear broken and disorganized on mobile devices. Users will have a hard time reading your content and may click away from your site. 2. Your site loads slowly Mobile users expect websites to load quickly, so if your site is slow, they’re likely to click away before it even loads. 3. You have pop-ups that block the content While pop-ups can be effective on desktop, they’re generally considered intrusive on mobile. If your pop-ups are blocking the content on your mobile site, users will likely click away. 4. Your content isn’t legible If your content is too small or difficult to read on a mobile device, users will click away. Make sure your content is legible and easy to read on all devices. 5. You have too much text Mobile users have shorter attention spans than desktop users, so they’re less likely to read long blocks of text. If your mobile site has too much text, users are likely to click away. 6.
- Your site isn’t mobile responsive
The most obvious reason why your website might not be working on a mobile device is that it is not mobile responsive. This means that the website does not resize proportionally to different size screens.
Google recommends responsive design as the best approach to mobile optimization, as it makes the most sense from an SEO perspective. However, responsive design does have some challenges, such as creating page content that will look good on multiple screen sizes.
The biggest mistake brands make is not designing their layouts and content with mobile devices in mind from the very beginning. This creates a inconsistent and sub-optimal experience across devices.
- You haven’t optimized for mobile-first indexing
Google is changing the way it indexes web pages to make it easier for mobile users to find what they are looking for. This change will reflect the fact that most searches now take place on mobile devices.
Google will now primarily index mobile versions of pages, only considering desktop versions when no mobile version is available.
This change only applies to those who have separate desktop and mobile pages on different domains. For example, if someone has a website called www.example.com and a mobile version on m.example.com, the desktop version of each page would show up in Google Search. However, mobile-first indexing means that the mobile version will show as standard from now on, unless there is a specific desktop version (which will show for searches done on a desktop computer).
- Slow mobile pages
Even though there is a lot of evidence that slow loading times result in fewer people completing a purchase, most websites do not load quickly enough. In fact, Google’s own research shows that the average web page takes 15 seconds to load on a mobile device.
The best practice is to have a mobile connection load in 3 seconds or less.
By July 2018, loading time on mobiles had become a factor in determining rankings on Google. Slow loading times not only lower your position on Google’s mobile search results page (SERP), but also impact other factors Google uses to determine rankings, such as bounce rate, time spent on a page, and number of pages visited.
Slow industries kill your conversion rates and just about every other important marketing strategy.
- Poor mobile navigation UX
The most important thing on a website is the menu. Small websites have a simple job, with the desktop menu being easily duplicated on the mobile version of the website. Large sites, however, can have difficulties.
Additionally, some menus have items that are passed over by a search engine’s indexing mechanisms, The text is saying that some menus have a lot of pages, and some of those pages are not indexed by search engines.
There is the potential that if the mobile menu only includes top-level pages, users might miss out on valuable information from the lower-level pages.
- The page content isn’t immediately obvious
A responsive website should be able to scale correctly and show the correct information in order to engage the user. A website’s header, which may include a logo, menu, slider, and breadcrumbs, may look great on a desktop, but when scaled down on a smaller device, the user may need to scroll a lot before getting to the page content. This can cause confusion for the user if all the pages have the same header.
- You’re using popups/interstitials
Many websites use overlays or interstitials to promote the brand’s app, get a user to sign up for their newsletters, or give special offers. However, when these are displayed on a mobile device, they often have a negative effect on the user experience, causing frustration.
- You haven’t optimized your CTAs for mobile
You can optimize your website’s layout for mobile devices, but if your calls to action are not effective on mobile, your success will be short-lived. The effectiveness of your calls to action will depend on how you optimize the content surrounding them, their visibility on mobile, where you place them on the page, and other factors.
Do not assume that your CTAs will work on mobile just because they have been working on desktop.
- Clickable elements aren’t optimized for touch
Many brands overlook the importance of touch when optimizing for mobile. If you want people to interact with your website, you need to make sure it is designed for touch. Navigation menus, CTA buttons, web forms, media players, and just about everything that turns casual browsers into potential customers all depends on touch gestures.
This means that touch elements, like buttons, should be large enough to be easily interacted with. Padding can help to make these touch elements larger.
You shouldn’t try to fit too many touch elements into a small space, because people are likely to end up touching the wrong thing. Also, make sure users can still see all the relevant content when touch elements appear on the screen. For instance, don’t make it so that users have to type blindly because the device’s native keyboard is covering the text field they’re trying to interact with.
- Your mobile forms are killing conversions
Web forms that are frustrating can be a major problem for users who are searching on a desktop. When this experience is switched to a mobile device, it can be the difference between a lead going to a competitor or making the sale yourself.
Use the correct HTML5 code for your web forms so the relevant keyboard will come up for messages, email addresses, numbers, etc. Make sure your layout is only one column, and use a lot of padding on every element so it will be easy to touch.
Always remember how difficult it is to type on a mobile device. Enable auto-complete and use the fewest number of fields necessary to reduce users’ workload.
4 Strategies for Creating a Mobile Friendly Website that Converts
Responsive design is killing two-thirds of your conversion.
The most significant problem is that we are too confident and focused on responsive design.
Responsive design can be great when it’s specifically designed with a mobile user’s experience in mind, rather than taking a desktop design and transferring it to a mobile screen.
We now know that responsive isn’t enough It’s time to move on to a more modern solution: adaptive design. It is time to move to a more modern solution: adaptive design.
Here are a few tips and examples to help you take advantage of unique mobile behavior to increase conversions.
#1 Reduce Cognitive Load and Distractions
A great mobile experience is one that understands the user’s intent and removes any barriers to a great experience.
A website that is not mobile-friendly and does not offer immediate personalized information or value to its visitors is likely to see a decline in conversions. The key reason for this is that users are less likely to pay attention to such a website, and the mental processing power required to use such a website is higher than for a mobile-friendly website.
We are constantly bombarded with information and our brains are exhausted from trying to process it all. Our ability to sort out what is important and what is not is nearly gone, which means that if we don’t get the information we expect quickly, we give up.
The best way to reduce cognitive load for your customers is to invest in emotional triggers. Emotional targeting helps identify the true intent of your customers and give them the experience they want. Google Analytics can help you understand what people are searching for on your site, what pages they land on, and how long they stay, while emotional targeting will help identify what content customers expect, what emotions they experience, and how to persuade them using the right images, colors, and copy. The combination of the two will ensure you’re showing customers what they want and reducing cognitive load.
#2 Design for Specific Mobile Behavior
If you work on a project for a long time, you may not see it the way someone else does when they see it for the first time. You may know where information is located on the screen, what an item on a menu means, or how to fill out a form, but it can be easy to forget what it is like to be new to the project.
We must design a better user experience for mobile screens and create dedicated mobile content. We also need to optimize navigation for mobile.
There are many times when I have left a website because I could not find what I was looking for, or because I had to scroll up and down constantly to understand the information.
Looking at your Google Analytics dashboard will give you a general idea of what mobile visitors are doing on your site.
The critical metrics that need attention here are:
- Your mobile audience
- Mobile Landing pages
- Keywords
- Mobile device report
- Exit Pages
- Funnel Visualization
- Site Behavior
A comprehensive evaluation of these metrics will provide you with a more detailed understanding of the specific behavior of mobile visitors on your site.
Find out:
- What are the main landing pages that mobile visitors land on?
- What are they searching for?
A mobile landing page that converts takes into account the mobile visitor’s experience on two levels:
- Design placement: headlines, images, CTA’s, and forms. How easy is it for the customer to physically find what they’re looking for and identify the important elements on the page?
- Content Strategy: The effort taken by the user to consume the content and understand the next step they need to take.
If a website’s mobile experience is not designed with the unique behavior of mobile users in mind, it can lead to problems with understanding content, increased frustration, and lower conversion rates.
#3 Adopt Mobile Driven Features
Mobile-optimized sites are three times more likely to see an increase in mobile conversation rates of five percent or greater, according to Adobe. Features such as:
The click to call button allows customers to quickly contact you no matter where they are on your site. This is a convenient way for customers to get in touch with you, and it makes it easy for them to do so.
People should be able to quickly scroll back to the top of the page.
Ensure that your videos are mobile-friendly by ensuring they work well on mobile devices and are the right size for the mobile screen.
When including links in your text, open them in new tabs to reduce friction and help people stay on track.
This means that the most important information should be at the top of the page.
Adding whitespace to your page can help reduce noise and an overload of information.
You can hide unimportant content by putting it in tabs or using a collapse feature like Slack does.
Make your form easier to fill out on mobile by breaking it into sections. Having too many fields in one form can be overwhelming and cause people to abandon it. By breaking up the form, you make it more user-friendly and increase the chances people will complete it.
Investigating these questions using analytics will not only tell us what content they are looking for but also help us create a better user journey.
#4 AB Testing
Try out different techniques to see which one works best for your audience.
Other elements worth testing on mobile:
- Strategy: Value proposition, hero shot, content strategy, images, colors psychology and persuasion.
- Usability: Forms- content, length, placement, and form field. Call to Action- color, placement, size, and content.
You’re Up
You will have to adopt a mobile-driven approach to deliver value to your mobile visitors and ensure a consistent flow of revenue.
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