Everyday people are spending more time on their mobile phone than their personal computer. Additionally, over 50% of the global web traffic comes through mobile devices while the number of mobile devices is expected to increase.
As a marketer, have you ever wondered if you really need a mobile web page? What are the most common mistakes that you should avoid every time that you develop a mobile-optimized web experience? Most importantly, what is the key elements in a mobile site?
In the below comprehensive article we will discuss the most common mistakes in designing a mobile web site.
- Visualization Is The Priority: The quality of the visual elements should be the main priority for a successful result. Distorted or low-quality images and blurry buttons can significantly affect the mobile experience generating high bounce rates. As a tip remember to always use clear and catchy images or videos that can differentiate your content and make it stand out.
- Wordy Pages: This is one of the most common mistakes in a mobile web strategy. Most brands stick with their web content while trying to transfer it to mobile. Mobile users are looking for concise and understandable information. So don’t repel them with too much text and complex pages. It is very important to keep mobile content simple and straightforward. The best practice is to use high-quality images, videos, and small titles with summarized descriptions that give the advantage to pass your message in an immediate and user-friendly manner.
- Page Format & Orientation: Page format is a key factor for a successful mobile user experience. Long pages that force users to scroll down over and over again are not the best option for an optimized mobile experience. An additional consideration is how responsive a mobile page is. Even if we are leaving in the responsive era some pages fail to render their content in both portrait and landscape orientation.
- CTA (Call-to-Action): The main purpose of a CTA is to drive mobile users to take an action e.g registration, purchase, submission forms. Effective CTAs can bring mobile users closer to the brand and turn them into valuable customers following the basic principles of inbound marketing. Secret CTA buttons, blurry images, and limited information lead to a bad mobile experience. Try to make CTAs stand out, make them big, colorful and eye-catching but always consider adjusting them based on page layout.
- Loading Time: Similar to the web pages, loading time is a key element in an effective mobile web strategy as most of the mobile users would wait 6-10 seconds before they abandon a page. According to Google, 70% of mobile web pages take over 5 seconds to load. Heavy images, 3rd party integration points (APIs), complicated page components (e.g carousels) and scripts, increase mobile loading times. Progressive download, distributed traffic (e.g. Akamai services), CMS and optimized APIs can significantly improve the performance and secure a smooth mobile experience.
- Entry forms: Personal data collection and mobile subscriptions are the most common tactics in mobile sites. Sometimes mobile designers fail to keep the forms simple by creating long and complicated entry forms. Simplify the fields, use radio buttons, drop-down menus, and 3rd party integration points (e.g. Facebook connect) to improve the user experience. Don’t forget that mobile users are looking for easy and quick information so keep your eyes on simple and compact mobile forms.
- Site Map: Another mistake that many mobile designers make, is creating big site maps especially when they try to enable m-commerce features within the mobile experience. Considering the principle of simplicity, m-commerce enabled sites that combine the above-mentioned points can offer optimized shopping flows that can increase any brand’s mobile sales.
- Missing Interactive Elements: Following the importance of the visual elements in a mobile strategy, interactive elements such as social media can significantly increase user engagement. While mobile social media is exploding, an interactive mobile site is able to enhance the brand’s digital presence.
Summary:
Marketers will keep their eyes on mobile sites that can make the difference. Before implement your mobile strategy be prepared first: Consider you mission, your audience and basically think like them, try to use catchy and simple content, clean page formats and high quality images and videos that attract user attention. Remember that performance plays a vital role in user engagement over mobile and finally, try to optimized the mobile form and the CTAs as much as possible.