You’ve got to ask yourself one question: “Are my customers frustrated by my mobile experience?”
March 29th, 2012by Erin
Well, are they? When you see the staggering figures of mobile web growing 8x the speed of the internet and that 1 billion people will own smartphones in just four short years, the question is not “Should I do mobile?”, the question is “Why don’t I have a mobile presence already?”
So where do you start if you don’t have a mobile presence? Start by thinking AS your consumer. Often as marketers or branders we forget to do just that. You’re on your mobile device, how would you first go about looking up your brand on the go. What would you be looking for? Odds are you would look up the brand name or product info in a search engine. You might be taken to a competing website or you might be taken to your website depending on the search optimization of your site, which yes, matters for mobile as much as it does for desktop web.
Next, you’re on your site, can you easily view on the tiny screen what you’re looking for? Are your store hours readily available? Can you find where your product is nearby? Can a consumer easily find how to get to your location? Can you easily find the basic stats on your product?
If you were unable to do these things, you can see why a customer may be frustrated with your brand’s mobile experience. It’s time for you to invest in a mobile-friendly website, even if it’s just a page to relay basic information before launching your full website for more information. And if you’re running any in store campaigns or coupons, there should be a mobile experience for that as well.
It’s important to have a basic mobile strategy, because it is no longer an option. If you look at the analytics for your website, you can see just how many missed mobile opportunities you could be losing. Mobile should be a part of your overall brand strategy. In this real world example 25% of the visitors to this website are on mobile devices which equals 50,000 visitors per month. Imagine frustrating the entire population of the Caymen Islands with your mobile experience.
Other ways you could be frustrating your consumer:
- Having flash elements on your site that are not compatible with mobile devices and tablets. This includes videos that are not compatible with mobile devices
- Excessive PDFs or large files, if it takes more than 5 Mississippi’s before your file downloads, your consumer could have already given up
- Your advertising takes the consumer to a non-mobile friendly experience. Even if you’re trying to promote your Facebook or Twitter feeds, it should be integrated as much as possible with mobile versions of these applications.
We know, you’re already juggling your website presence, your social marketing and your online advertising, and mobile is a whole other thing to think about, but at this point, it’s too important not to.
