The increase in sales of smart phone devices has opened a new marketing window to our businesses – mobile friendly websites. Ignoring this market might actually result in a sales decrease. Do you think we are exaggerating? According to Mobify, 57% of mobile users will leave your website if it takes them more than 3 seconds to load. If that is not worrying enough for you here is some more interesting news – 30% of mobile users will abandon their purchase if the shopping experience is not optimised for their mobile devices.
Mobile optimised websites are not a commodity anymore and it is vital for us to make sure that our websites can be viewed without any issues on both desktop and portable devices. If the above stats are not enough, the below reasons should make you think twice:
Mobile and desktop users are different
One has to always keep in mind that when a user accessed a website through a mobile device, the chance is that they want fast access to the content being presented to them. This means that if a mobile website is not fast enough, the user will immediately abandon the portal and find the information they want somewhere else. Worst case scenario? They lose faith in your brand and they do not visit your website all-together, preferring other portals which might be more suitable.
Keep in mind that the more user-friendly your portal is, the easier it is going to be for your audience to navigate through it.
Mobile traffic is increasing
Mobify argue that mobile adoption is increasing at a very fast rate when compared to the rate of web adoption. To be more precise, they are stating that mobile web adoption is 8x times faster than web adoption when compared to the 1990s and early 2000s.
Still not impressed? We need to keep in mind that due to the increase in functionality present on our smart phones, we are now engaging in two important ways – simultaneous usage and sequential usage. Simultaneous usage means that we are “using more than one device at the same time for either a related or an unrelated activity”. Sequential usage means “moving from one device to another at different times to accomplish a task”.
Did we get your attention yet?
Better Brand Engagement
Studies have shown that when users access a website through their mobile device, there is a higher chance for them to visit your desktop website. The idea is that when your audience sees consistency through your online persona and they see that you have optimised your website, a sense of trust is instilled in them.
However this can also work the other way round – this means that if your website is not optimised for mobile devices and clients are visiting your portal, you might actually be losing potential customers.
Increased number of conversions
Mobile optimised websites are a good source for higher conversions. It is very important for us to make it easier for our clients to engage with our website – being it a contact form or an ecommerce transaction this needs to highly optimised for our audience to do.
One has to keep in mind that users are spending more and more time on their smart phone devices, and from our side we need to be sure that we are tapping into that market.
Bounce Rate
You have just written a really good piece on your website blog, however after accessing your analytics you just realise that you have not gained the reach that you were expecting. Did you try accessing the same article from a mobile device?
Keep in mind that most people read articles while they are waiting somewhere. If an article is not legible they are immediately going to shun it and move to the next website.
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