Bridging the gap: The shrinking distance between mobile and web success
As of 2017, there are over 2 billion smartphone users in the world, according to Statista. That’s over one third of the world’s population, and because of their prevalence, it is increasingly important that mobile sites work just as well as desktop sites.
As the mobile world has developed, there have been lags in connecting the persistent success of a standard website with that of a company’s mobile website. What we are seeing today is a shift in that trend. More and more companies are realizing the importance that development of a seamless mobile site is just as important, if not more so, than a desktop site.
When building a successful web business today, companies need to take into consideration that transactions and conversions are being completed across multiple devices rather than just one. Therefore, developing sites that work well on multiple platforms is critical for success in this increasingly digital world.
In order to keep up with this trend, and to understand the experience performance customers are experience on both mobile and web sites, it’s important to break your targets down into these five categories:
- The appearance of the site
- A mobile marketing strategy
- A way to monitor users
- Strategies to resolve technical issues
- Data consolidation and target results
Appearances
The overall design of your site can be a determining factor of its success. Cluttered sites may make transactions or conversions more difficult, and cause potential customers to leave your site. Plus, if you rely on the same layout for your mobile site that you do for your digital site, you are likely to have more issues in shifting the content from one medium to the other.
The best thing to do is to test your overall design in a mobile layout before setting it to go live. By doing that, you will hopefully catch any layout issues that make the site more difficult for your mobile users ahead of time.
Google has reported that 61% of users won’t return to mobile site if they had trouble accessing it, and many of those troubles come from overcomplicated designs or pages overcrowded with content. That should be a guiding statistic for businesses going into the coming years; in an age dominated by mobile use, the percentage of people dissatisfied with any mobile site should be significantly lower.
Developing a mobile marketing strategy
A mobile marketing strategy is critical for technical development. In fact, in a 2015 report by Salesforce, 71% of global marketers said mobile marketing is core to their business strategy. Most likely not going to be the same as your web marketing strategy. You might target a different audience segment, or enhance different parts of your website that are more fit for a mobile audience. (For example, you are less likely to have a video that plays automatically on a mobile device than on a standard website.)
The benefit is that mobile marketing strategies can strengthen the positioning not just of big companies, but smaller companies, as well. Google’s 2013 Mobile Search Moments Study found that 40% of mobile searches have local intent. Mobile devices tend to use positioning tools that allow users to take advantage of services from businesses that are near their location. Therefore, mobile marketing is accessible to businesses of all sizes, making it a dynamic, universal tool that will have impact on all economies going forward.
Monitoring the digital customer journey
The digital customer journey is a critical part of the user experience. The path a user takes from the moment they find your landing page is crucial. It affects how fast they get to the conversion point, and how smooth that process is. If customer has to jump through multiple hoops to get to the targeted end page, then they are more likely to leave your page than follow through with the process.
The mobile customer journey has to be even more compact. Mobile users move through sites faster, whether it’s scrolling or jumping between pages. As with a website, companies need to understand why a customer is choosing one option over another, or why they are leaving the site entirely. Because it’s two different media, there’s a very good chance it’s two different thought processes, and that needs to be taken into consideration.
In addition, the mobile economy has become an integral part of everyday life. The hospitality and travel and industry have capitalized on this field by creating mobile-friendly sites that allow travelers to book any part of their journey while they’re on the go – and it’s paid off. Not only do companies get quick feedback from customers if sites aren’t allowing them to move forward in their transactions, they can also see the rate at which their mobile sites are being used, as well as their overall effectiveness.
Quick resolution of technical issues
Every mobile device widens the technological field-which is both amazing and dangerous at the same time. It means that any mobile site that is created either needs to be redesigned in new form every time a new smart device comes out or the initial design needs to be adaptable to the different mobile setups available in order to prevent technical errors from appearing in countless formats or reappearing when they were thought to be fixed.
Basically, the goal of bridging the mobile gap is to use website session replay to be able to fix problems as soon as they happen, just as you would be able to with this technology on a desktop site. Because of the reliance on mobile devices, in some ways, solving mobile issues is more urgent, as people rely on their phone outside of standard locations and therefore the quicker the problem is addressed, the quicker the user can reach their destination, or make a specific purchase.
Data consolidation
What makes the mobile-web divide such a gray area is the division of data that is retrieved from both fields. Some companies might even have separate teams to handle web and mobile issues or content strategies, when in today’s multi-platform world, that simply doesn’t need to be the case. With the right technology, mobile and web trends can be tracked together and provide a more well-rounded picture of what your company is experiencing at any point in time during their time on your website.
When you employ Glassbox’s customer experience analytics software, you’re able to break down all of these barriers and create a more well-rounded perspective on your site as a whole. By finding the balance between the web and the mobile sites, it will help you and your team to enhance the quality of the content you provide your users, and in turn, gives you the knowledge you need to put out a winning product.
