Mobile Conversion Optimization: The Basics
More than 64% of the US residents are users of mobile devices. According to the PEW Research Center, 90% of the American adults own a smartphone device and use it daily. While these statistics are an interesting read, the fact that should worry every Internet marketer is the following:
In 2015, mobile searches have officially surpassed desktop.
The Google officially disclosed this piece of information in May 2015, and underlined that this trend will continue to increase; making it very clear for every e-commerce marketer that the time has come, once again, for us to return to our drawing boards.
Faced with the fact that the audience is turning to a completely different model of research and evaluation when thinking about purchasing, marketers will have to adjust their strategies in order to keep their revenues on a steady grow.
Believe it or not, 91% of SMB website owners are neglecting this fact and are still flushing funds into standard SEO services in thr hope that their traffic won’t drop. Of course, SEO still remains an important feature of your online marketing strategy, in fact, in 2016, it should be considered as a standard.
However, missing out on mobile search and not optimizing your website for mobile is, straightforward, irresponsible. Now that we are well aware that our audience has changed its address, there is no valid reason for us to keep knocking at the wrong door.
Consequently, as our approach changes in accordance with the latest standards, the time has come to embrace a completely new version of Conversion Rate Optimization – a mobile conversion optimization.
While the idea behind CRO in general remains the same (improving UI and utilizing our online stores in order to draw more conversions from traffic), optimizing a mobile version of your website is a completely new practice which requires a completely different set of action, that you will have to perform in order to get the best of your visitors traffic.
The Importance of Flat and Appropriate Design
Although the global adoption of the 4G network is going along as planned, as an e-commerce marketer you will still have to count on the fact that not everyone has a 4G or LTE connection on their smartphone. Even if a person has a fast connection, it could be an unstable one. So if your bounce rate is high, that is a good indicator that your website might have too many data delivering to your prospects, which is easily checked through your Webmaster tools. It is as simple as that – the more data you put on your page – the more time it will take for that page to load. Fast loading pages are crucial to conversions, and according to KISSmetrics, even a one-second delay could result in a 7% conversion loss. Here is what to do:
Go easy on the design elements – the fewer elements you use, the faster the page can load. A flat and an intuitive design, with conversion optimized content, will always deliver more revenue than a complex design that your visitors would probably like, if they could just be patient enough to actually download that page.
Probably the first thing you will have to check is whether your mobile landing pages respond to every size. There are literally dozens of different sizes, for example, the new iPhone 6 is a different size from that of the iPhone 5, etc. That’s basic stuff! So the best thing that you can do is cut back on some content to make the experience more enjoyable for the mobile users. Video advertising is always a great solution, since it’s comprehensive and it will certainly deliver the desired message fast, but if you insist on having written content published, then have the following tips in mind:
Your images should always be in an appropriate format (.png) and never larger than a 400KB maximum. And always use a font size of at least 16 pixels for the body of your text.
In that way, you are delivering your content fast and clear, which are the two most important factors for your conversions. The third most important factor that you cannot afford to neglect is, of course, your Call-To-Action Button.
The Mobile Friendly Call to Action
Humans suffer from a choice paradox – we like to choose between two items. However, if we are presented with multiple choices –we become indecisive. In a study conducted by the Columbia University, the participants who were asked to choose one chocolate from a box of six were happier with their selection than the ones who were offered to choose one from a box of thirty. This is basic psychology, but while most CRO experts love to talk about the psychological tricks that drive conversions, we will stick to the proven strategies as the one above mentioned. So when it comes to choices, less is more.
In addition, if you want to give your visitors multiple choices, give weight to one choice over others. For example, if you have a pricing strategy that includes a few different models of your service – always invest just a little bit more time in one category in particular.
You need a call to action button presented at the beginning and at the end of your landing page, this rule remains the same as it always was in the CRO design. However, don’t forget that we are on mobile now. Probably the best option that you can utilize is adding a straight-to-call button on your WordPress website.
More Basics and Some Technical Stuff
While you are entering the world of mobile optimization, there are a few basic technical things that you cannot afford to miss. The first one is – don’t use flash animations. Not just that they aren’t mobile friendly, but they are also taking up a lot of space on your sidebar. Instead, rely on HTML5 and GIF files if you need any animation on your website.
The second recommendation that you will surely appreciate is that you should start using your own analytics software through first-party cookies to track visitors. Believe it or not, two-thirds of mobile traffic does not allow third party cookies, and this little issue makes your tracking of the effectiveness of your mobile advertisement effort tremendously more difficult.
So utilize, mobilize, and keep reading .ME blog, since we will continue to provide you with more actionable tips on how to get the best out of your mobile traffic. 🙂
