According to Google statistics, 61% of Google's organic traffic in the 4th quarter of 2019 came through mobile devices. And in the same year, 204bn apps had been downloaded through the App Store and Play Store combined. There is no doubt that the smartphone is becoming the primary device when it comes to browsing the internet. Even though mobile traffic is increasing, Google reports that the conversation rate of mobile engagement is less compared to other mediums. if you get more mobile visitors vs. web traffic, but mobile isn’t contributing to your sales, it's time to rethink your mobile strategy.

Initially, companies developed mobile-friendly websites. What they did was simply resized their existing website and it helped. Right now, even the terminology has changed from mobile friendly to mobile responsive and optimised. Having a mobile-friendly site nowadays can drive organic traffic, but it won't generate meaningful conversions. This article will help you rethink your mobile strategy to stay relevant to your customers.

1. Need for Speed

Users easily get distracted when browsing on a mobile device. If your site takes more than 3 seconds to load, the first impression you are giving the visitor is a bad one. There's a high chance they abandon the search and move on. Usually, when designing a mobile site, speed must be the first priority. Sometimes you have to compromise some of the functionalities in your website to make it load faster.

The following is an article about how BMW made their mobile site the fastest in the industry to give the impression to their customers that they value speed at every aspect of their business.

2. Customised UI

There has to be a customised design for any mobile website. Usually, when designing a mobile-first website, you have to arrange information in an easy to find manner. Navigating through the site has to be easy and thumb-friendly and it doesn't need to have all the graphical elements and functionalities that your website has.

3. Think like a user

You have to understand what your audience is expecting and to provide them with a hassle-free experience. Let say for an example that you have a vision care service, most of the people who use your site for the first time might be using visual aids, therefore your content has to be clear and contrast for them to understand it. If your users are using the website mostly during bedtime or if they use it for a long period of time, you have to make sure that you don't use bright flashy colours. If you’re targeting a global audience and your call to action involves calling, you have to think about alternative options like WhatsApp, Viber or Skype calls to save carrier charges. Also, their experience should involve limited typing. If the user doesn't have the option to save his or her login and they’re required to type their details every time they log in, needless to say, how annoying that could be.

4. One-click call to actions

There has to be clear call to actions and they have to be with a single click of a button. Let's say you encourage them to call you, but your number appears as a text that they have to copy, open their call app, past the number and dial, chances of them going through that hassle is unlikely. Even if it's a checkout, you have to keep it within several steps. If it's about submitting a form, personal information like email, name, address has to automatically populate.

5. Need for a Mobile App

Most companies try to provide an app-like user experience through their mobile site but at some point, they have to figure out if they need a native app to provide a better experience. This is a challenging decision as it requires a considerable budget, time and other resources. Also, you have to win a position in your customer’s app list by competing with all the other A-list applications such as Uber, Whatsapp and Netflix. If users visit your site frequently, or if they create user accounts with you, think about providing a better user experience through accessing inbuilt device functionalities like GPS, camera, media files and so on. Once you’ve explored all of this, then you’d be best to look at a native mobile application.

6.Continuous testing

Once the mobile site is up and running, your work is not done. You always can have better versions through continuous testing and development.

According to Profitero, Amazon makes more than 2.5 million changes to their product prices every day. According to Mervin Chow, VP, App marketing at Google, Google had performed 460,000 tests during 2019 which resulted in about 3,600 changes to their products. We don't have the same resources that Google has, but you can run simple A/B tests to find out what works better. In A/B testing, you analyse the responses you get for a component, then you change that component and perform the test again. Depending on the responses you got for component A and component B, you can decide which one has a better result and keep that component. These necessary tweaks help to improve your user experience.

7.Keeping it relevant

Technology gets outdated fast So it's important to upgrade your site in a timely manner with the latest technologies to stay relevant to your users.

Is your site relevant? If not, it's time for a change.