You may know that your website has to be accessible on mobile devices, but have you taken this knowledge a step further to optimize your mobile website content? Here is what you need to know about making your mobile website content valuable and easy-to-reach for a growing demographic of website visitors.
The Importance of Mobile-Friendly Content
Why is it so important for you to focus on the creation of mobile website content? Statistics show that mobile Internet access is growing at an impressive speed. If you fail to market to an increasingly large demographic that is accessing your website, you stand to lose out.
Statista reports that nearly one-third of organic search traffic in the United States is sourced from a mobile device. Nearly $84 billion in e-commerce in the U.S. is associated with mobile purchases or searches, and over one-third of product searches are done with a mobile device.
Think about how many times you have been out shopping or meeting a friend when you decided to browse a website for a retailer or restaurant for more information before your meeting time arrived. What would you do if the website that you were trying to access only included huge posts or off-center images that blocked the text that you were trying to read? Content that is not optimized for mobile use frustrates a large percentage of your customers and potential buyers.
Determining If Your Website Content Is Mobile-Friendly
Now that you truly understand how important it is to create mobile website content, how do you go about actually achieving this goal? Experts from Business 2 Community and Content Marketing Institute provide valuable advice.
- Utilize a font size that automatically scales down for mobile devices. A large font can make scrolling a chore for mobile users. Ensuring that users are able to zoom in if they cannot read the font is important for people who need the text to be just a bit larger.
- Give users the option to save website information to access later. Mobile users may be browsing quickly while they are waiting on someone to arrive. The fact that these users may have to put their mobile device away in the middle of browsing means that the option to save information related to the page that they were reading is a desirable feature of a mobile website.
- Use links to your website when you are launching an email marketing campaign. One of the most common tasks that people complete on a mobile device is checking their emailing. Increasing website traffic by linking users to the website when emails are sent is a great way to encourage potential customers to take the next step.
- Cater to the connection that your target demographic uses. You will have to do some research to determine whether your potential customers use a wi-fi connection on their mobile devices. These individuals are more likely to be able to load graphics and watch videos. If you find out that your target demographic does not utilize wi-fi capabilities, you may want to leave out the extras that take more time to load.
- Keep mobile website content short and to the point. People who are accessing your website when they have just a few minutes do not have time to read through a lot of fluff. Padding your content with fluff is a bad idea anyway, so crafting content that gets to the point right away is the best way to keep mobile users engaged when they visit your website.
- Along with eliminating videos or images when appropriate, remember to eliminate Flash elements from your mobile website content. Most mobile devices are not able to load these components of a website, and an error screen may result. Your potential customers may not be able to find out more about your business when you integrate Flash into your mobile website.
- Include breaks in content to make it easy for a visitor to digest each piece of information individually. Headings, bullet points or swipeable slides work well for this purpose.
A Closing Thought
Reaching mobile users is more important than ever. More people are using a mobile device as their primary method of accessing the Internet, and your company needs to cater to this change in the way that people access your website in order to stay ahead of the competition. Mobile website content that is short, concise and appropriately sized for easy reading on a mobile device is a must.
