Marketing in a Mobile-First World: 8 Tips for Creating Better Content
By Mark Frazee
With more than half of all online traffic coming from mobile devices, optimizing your marketing activities for mobile is more important than ever. Businesses risk falling behind if they don’t follow the best mobile practices. This is only heightened with Google’s decision to implement mobile-first indexing, meaning search results will be based on a site’s mobile version and not its desktop version as has long been the standard practice.
There are, of course, both pros and cons to different devices, and you will need to adapt your marketing activities to be mobile-friendly. Here are eight things to remember that will help you optimize your content for mobile:
“Fast and responsive web pages are not to be overlooked: in fact, even 1-second speed changes have had billion-dollar impacts.”
Optimizing for Mobile
Take note of a few things when comparing the desktop version (landscape) and mobile version (portrait) of Six Flags Great Adventure’s website. While both sites offer the same capabilities, the mobile version differs in a few ways- including condensed content to be optimized for smaller screens and the use of expandable tabs for site navigation.
Trust that privacy is everything.
Establishing a sense of trust and security for consumers is perhaps the most important thing you can do in designing effective mobile content. According to one study, lack of trust was found to be the single largest barrier to mobile purchases and app downloads, with 36% of respondents saying they did not download an app due to trust issues. Unfortunately, developers do not always design content with this in mind.
What you can do: establish and promote safeguards to protect consumer data, clearly identify how data is used, require only essential personal information
Your audience is addicted, but not captive.
People are using mobile devices more than ever- over 1.9 billion people now own smartphones- but attention spans are short. Make your content easy and quick to use.
What you can do: front-load information, conduct SEO activities, simplify and condense text via headings, subheadings, list functions, block quotes and expandable content; utilize multimedia content
There are more distractions on mobile.
You’re likely constantly receiving push notifications from other outlets: social media, email, news, business, health and more. Aim to minimize their effects.
What you can do: optimize your content for speed and simplicity, engage your readers quick with front-loaded information, consider your own push notification system
Network usage and connection speeds are uncertain.
People are using more data than ever- on average over 30 GB a month- but not everyone has unlimited data. Fast and easy-to-use content is essential. This will help both to gain user trust and your bottom dollar. Not optimizing the speed of your mobile site is a common mistake.
What you can do: respect your users and their data usage by optimizing your website to have fast connection speeds. Fast and responsive web pages are not to be overlooked: in fact, even 1-second speed changes have had multi-billion dollar impacts, as was the case with Amazon. Use tools such as Google Analytics and PageSeed to gauge your site.
Mobile is more personal: embrace that!
Mobile devices are an integral part of our lives and allow for an intimate connection between the user and device. Too many brands focus on their product alone, not on how people interact with their products.
What you can do: allow personalization and customization when possible; focus on how the user interacts with your product, not just the product itself
Mobile devices have smaller screens.
It seems so simple, but it’s essential to remembering when designing mobile content. A desktop and an iPhone are not the same: design content that caters to the needs of each! Most web searches begin on mobile; they transfer to desktop later for more in-depth web activities.
What you can do: design a responsive site optimized to the smaller screens of mobile, but a word of caution: make your mobile and desktop sites have the same capabilities. Users will seek a familiar and friendly experience on mobile; provide it.
You can utilize the functionality of the device itself.
We’re no strangers to mobile devices: we know that they are basically just our glorified personal assistants! Use these extra amenities to your advantage, but remember our first point: privacy and security are essential. Never require too much personal information from your customers; only require what is essential.
What you can do: allow users to connect to other capabilities on their phone: upload photos, add to calendar, add reminders, and more, but respect their privacy
Mobile can be used (almost) anywhere!
Of course, that’s what makes mobile mobile! Take advantage of this and remember you are designing mobile content.
What you can do: consider substantive location-based services, messaging that taps into this ability
You may have noticed some similar trends: mobile marketing always comes down to putting the consumer first! Mobile is personal and intimate, and you will establish trust by providing secure, fast, responsive, easy-to-use content.
Mark Frazee is a media and business student at Duquesne University specializing in PR and Journalism, currently exploring best practices within social media and digital marketing. Connect with Mark via email.
Sources:
“Best Practices in mobile marketing”. Mobile Marketing, 2020. https://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/mobile-marketing-best-practices-mgage
Dano, Mike. “’Alarming’ unlimited data usage: 31.4 GB per month and rising. 2018. Fierce Wireless. https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/alarming-unlimited-data-usage-31-4-gb-per-month-and-rising
Green, Viki. “Impact of slow page load time on website performance.” 2016. https://medium.com/@vikigreen/impact-of-slow-page-load-time-on-website-performance-40d5c9ce568a
Nahai, Natthalie. “Webs of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion”. 2017. Pearson Education. Pages 76-80.
Patel, Neil. “Does Your Website Need a Mobile Makeover? 8 Mobile Optimization Tips To Improve Your Site’s UX”. https://neilpatel.com/blog/8-mobile-ux-tips/
Randolph, Bridget. “How Does Mobile-First Indexing Work, and How Does It Impact SEO?” 2018. Moz. https://moz.com/blog/mobile-first-indexing-seo