Are you at 1st base with your mobile website?
Many UK businesses have now tentatively taken the step to have a mobile site – either standalone or encorporated within a responsive design. Due to the surge in widespread smartphone use and mobile ecommerce getting to 1st base has been the order of the day. At this point the questions we need to ask are:
- What are the digital KPIs for the mobile website?
Take a look at Bernard Marr‘s books to learn more about setting KPIs but for me we need to understand the task based nature of the smartphone user. Repeat visits for instance might be a more important signal because a mobile site can be used on your premises, enroute to your premises or in the comfort of their own home – if the lasting memory is ‘efficiency’ then that will be reflected in visitors coming back to you again and again. Conversely, it might be less important that the user dwells on your website for tens of minutes – because the typical smartphone user spends less time browsing around any said mobile site. - Is our mobile architecture set up for the long term?
The biggest consideration here is separate sites versus responsive (responsive wins as a long term solution in cost effectiveness & efficient) but also we need to think about analytics tracking, online advertising tracking and if we are feeling ultra professional separate UX software for smarthpone analysis.
I thought I’d include a message of inspiration inspiration from UX guru Jakob Nielson (check out his exceptional book on Mobile Usability here) and also some information from the Google Partners program that I found rather useful:
(source: Google Partners)
Be thumb friendly
Design your site so even large hands can easily interact with it.
Design for visibility
Ensure your content can be read at arm’s length.
Simplify navigation
Clear navigation, hierarchy and vertical scrolling aid access to information.
Make it accessible
Ideally, your mobile site you should work across all mobile devices and all handset orientations.
Make it easy to convert
Focus on information that will aid conversion.
Make it local
Include functionality that helps people find and get to you.
Use mobile site redirects
Give users a choice to go back to the desktop site, but make it easy to return to the mobile site.
Keep it quick
Help mobile users, design your site to load fast and make copy easy to scan.
Make it seamless
Bring at much of the functionality of your desktop site to mobile.
Learn, listen & iterate
Good mobile sites are user-centric, meaning they’re built with input from your audience.