All marketers include their company website(s) as a core component of their marketing arsenal and most have a digital strategy but According to recent research, only 16% of marketers have a mobile strategy.
When we say mobile strategy, we’re referring to development of mobile websites, apps, mobile advertising, m-commerce, SMS and mobile content marketing.
By 2014 it is predicted that mobile internet usage will take over desktop internet usage. So if you don’t have a mobile marketing strategy yet, now is the time to think about one!
Quite simply, people love their mobile devices. Around 86% of mobile internet users use their smartphone or tablet whilst watching TV and 77% of mobile searches are in a location where people likely have a PC available to them, such as home or work.
If you are advertising online, you will have given some thought to advertising for mobile devices. The helpful people at Google and Facebook make mobile advertising relatively simple by auto-generating mobile ads and Analytics will let you see which mobile devices users have used to access your landing pages.
This is all great but here’s a shocking statistic: Last year (2012), Google reported that less than 10% of mobile advertisers have a mobile site themselves. This means that 90% of mobile advertisers are inviting mobile traffic to view a website which isn’t optimised for mobile.
Mobile interaction is proven to be a more successful form of engagement than desktop interaction. As well as increased engagement time, one in five visits to a mobile site result in an immediate phone call to the business. People searching on mobile are often time-limited, they want to make faster decisions and they need the info immediately.
The point we’re trying to make here is; whether advertising online or not, if you have a website, it should be optimised for mobile.
Here are a few things to think about when optimising your site for mobile:
• Use responsive web design to scale the content of your web pages to the device being used.
• Most users are right handed – can they access the main areas / calls to action with their right thumb easily? And are the buttons large enough?
• Make sure the mobile site is light and loads quickly – mobile users will wait three seconds on average before they abandon a site… Impatient people.
• Consider local searches – one half of all local searches are performed on mobile devices. Make use of maps and geotagging
• Include a click to call feature so users can get in touch in one easy click.
• Keep calls to action and important navigation at the top and display information in columns where possible.
• Make sure forms are really easy to complete and submit.
According to the KPCB Internet Trends 2013 report, mobile takes up 12% of our time but only gets 3% of ad spend.
With the introduction of a new generation of mobile devices such as Google Glasses and the iWatch from Apple, the future of mobile marketing looks very exciting. Hands free, environment-aware, fully connected devices will be commonplace before long. Now is the time to be proactive and get mobile friendly.
We love mobile here at Purple so if you would like any help or advice with your mobile strategy, give us a call.
Rhea Jeffery Senior Account Manager at The Purple Agency
Rhea has a background in both agency and client-side marketing. She gets very excited about digital projects – especially if they involve search or content marketing. Rhea spends more than a healthy amount of time looking at Analytics for her clients and firmly believes that marketing activity should be based on solid figures and show a firm return on investment.
When not at work, Rhea tries to keep fit by taking ballet classes and playing squash very badly. At the weekend she can be found in sunny Devon where her family live or nosing around National Trust properties imagining she lives in them.
