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Change Your Mobile Strategy NOW!!!
On this day, the 21st of April, search giant Google updated its search algorithm for mobile devices. Mobile search results will now be ranked in order of how mobile friendly a site is. That means that sites, which have easy to read text, adaptive imaging – allows for images to resize and fit any screen the site is being viewed from, and easy to-click links will receive priority ranking for any mobile search query.
This new update is of massive importance to any ecommerce site as a recent Ofcom study have shown a year on year rise in online purchases, or to be more exact, from 20% to 24%, 2013 to 2014. This trend is expected to continue into the foreseeable future as the use of smartphones and tablets continues to rise. The popularity of tablets is of particular interest as its use doubles year on year from 11% to 24% (2011 to 2012), then 24% to 44% (2012 to 2013).
In short, mobile website optimisation is now a necessity! So how does one get started on making a site mobile friendly? Well that’s where we come in, now don’t worry, we’re not trying to hard sell you but rather preform a public service of sorts. So here’s our short guide on how to optimise your site for mobile:
Ease of Use: This may seem like I’m stating the obvious but it can be incredibly easy to create a site, which is not user friendly. For instance, many sites place greater emphasis on aesthetics over function. It’s an understandable urge as a website acts like a digital store window so you’d want it to be as eye catching as possible, but functionality should be the preeminent concern as one major contributing factor to a high bounce rate (how long a site visitor stays on your site before they leave) is whether they find it easy to accomplish the thing they wanted to do.
Test Effectiveness: According to Media Post, “Mobile shoppers put ease of use foremost when it comes to mobile shopping sites, with 48% of respondents citing it as the most important quality of a mobile site they visit.”
All this means is that mobile customers want things to be quick and simple. So ensure that your mobile portal accomplishes this by first highlighting what the key task for that page is, e.g. buying items. Is the purchase icon easy to click, can they specify how much of said item they gave to buy beforehand, must they checkout after adding something to their basket or can they continue shopping.
Consistency: is another key issue, if the site affords the consumer an uneven experience then repeat custom is unlikely that’s where the speed comes into it. You want to make sure that the site loads quickly as a mobile shopper is an impatient shopper or as Mediapost found,”fast-loading pages are tops with 20%, and 12% most appreciate not having to search around for the search bar itself.”
So how do you go about improving your site right now, well you can start by…
Picking the Right Template: It’s a simple fix as most sites utilise a third party theme or template as a design layout. The most popular content management systems (CMS), like WordPress, Joomla, Blogger etc., only require a few well placed clicks to be altered, follow this link to see Google’s brief guide on how to do this.
As they all use…
Responsive Web Design: This is when the desktop, tablet and mobile versions of a page use the same URL and code. The page content automatically adjusts to the display used to view it. Furthermore, RWD sites require less upkeep as you’ll only need to maintain a single version of the site.
So for those of you using a non RWD CMS switch now and if you need any help why not contact us, Plus1Digital, we can help you create the perfect responsive site in-time for Google’s mobile update.