6 Tips to Optimize Your Content for Mobile Users
The average smartphone user spends five hours a day on their mobile phone. Of this time, 8% was spent using a mobile browser to surf the web, which equates to about 24 minutes per day. With consumers dedicating so much time to this method of browsing, it’s absolutely essential for you to convert your normal website into a mobile-friendly platform.
If people click on your site and find that the text is size one and the site width spans far past their phone’s dimensions, they’ll simply click away and find another company. But you can avoid this with these six tips to optimize your content for mobile users:
1. Connect to Social Media
In the same study referenced above, smartphone users spent 92% of their time in apps. While creating an app for your business might be a bit out of the question, that doesn’t mean you still can’t benefit from this. Optimize your mobile marketing by connecting your website to your social media accounts so users can quickly make the transition from the mobile browser to their apps.
Consumers love interacting with a brand’s social media accounts, as it provides them deeper insight into your communication and service skills. Try adding links to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and whatever other accounts you have right on your homepage in a header or footer.
2. Improve Your Page Speed
Mobile users don’t want to spend several minutes waiting for a page to load. In fact, one study that looked at the behavior of users on a shopping site found that over half of the participants abandoned the page if it took longer than three seconds to load. Furthermore, even having your site load a half second slower or faster could increase or decrease your sales by 10%.
These numbers are proof that slow-loading webpages don’t have a place in our fast-paced, modern world. Keep up with the times by optimizing all of your images with the smallest file size possible without losing quality. Additionally, streamline your coding so that there aren’t any processor-heavy loops, utilize the browser cache to help returning customers get faster page loads, and eliminate redirects so that browser doesn’t overload itself.
3. Create Scannable Content
It should come as no surprise that mobile users do a lot of scanning when browsing. If your website is full of dense, heavy text with no formatting and no line breaks, users will have nothing to scan. They’ll take one look at the big wall of words in front of them and simply move on.
Give users the quick reading experience they crave by using plenty of H1, H2, H3, and H4 subheadings to organize your ideas and highlight the most important elements of your content. Additionally, bulleted lists, block quotes, and other ways to set off content are a good way to make the main points stand out clearly. Always keep paragraphs short and to the point, without redundant fluff.
4. Design for Mobile
Obviously, you should have a website template specifically for mobile devices. Because your server receives information on the type of device accessing your data, you can easily maintain a layout for web users and a layout for mobile users if you’d like to keep your web version a little more detailed.
Most mobile layouts fall into two categories: responsive configuration that adapts to the specifics of the device, or a separate mobile site configuration. With the responsive coding, you won’t have to duplicate content, but it will take some time to program the fluid, flexible, and adaptive coding. A separate mobile URL, on the other hand, is basically a copy of your web URL, but formatted specifically for mobile users. It’s tricky, because if you make an update to your normal website, you’ll need to manually go in and change the content on your mobile site.
For either mobile layout, consider avoiding flash and pop-ups. Many phones don’t have flash capabilities, meaning that a lot of your content might appear as just a blank box. Pop-ups are simply irksome, especially if they have a tiny X which the user must zoom in to find and hit to close them.
Finally, create a menu that’s easy to access from any point on the page that includes all of the main features of your site. Make sure these buttons are not too big or too small, as they might get pressed accidentally or be too hard to press altogether.
5. Use Videos and Photos
In many cases, a mobile user won’t want to read content at all. Instead, they might prefer to view videos or browse infographics. Give your audience what it craves by including plenty of visual stimulation on your site, such as animated graphics, illustrations, and more. This will help to pull new customers in and get them more interested in browsing your site.
Make sure the visual content you are using is both entertaining, informative, and shareable. If it meets all of these requirements, you’ll find it much easier to get shares from your followers, which will in turn direct more and more people to your site.
6. Add Meta Info
One of the biggest ways users stumble across your pages on their mobile device is through a Google search. When Google shows your site on a search result page, it includes the meta description and page title. Therefore, it’s absolutely vital to craft meta information that’s intriguing and alluring to the customer.
If applicable, use any local geotags in the meta to attract nearby customers. Additionally, make your meta description in active voice, as it will be easier to read and give the customer a responsibility to click and find out more.
Naturally, these aren’t the only things you can do to create killer mobile content. However, they’re a good start for attracting new customers via the blossoming mobile device platform. By utilizing these techniques, you’ll be able to curate new loyal clients that will provide repeat service thanks to your intuitive and helpful web platform.
Kristy Snyder is a professional whose work can be found all over the internet. She currently calls the Pacific Northwest home and enjoys drinking beer, yoga classes, and spending time with her cat. Follow her writing adventures at kristysnyder.com or follow her @kristysnyder.
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