Content is king until your customer pulls out a smartphone. Then your website visitor is most likely looking for your contact details and other basic information, and they want it fast. Customers aren’t going to spend a lot of time navigating your site on a phone if they can’t find what they need.
While customers love reading on their tablets, phone users aren’t as keen. Even if you have a responsive site, you may be losing out on mobile conversions.
The latest research in content and search suggests that readers are gravitating toward longer posts when reading on their computers. In addition, search engines are favouring longer posts because they can deliver users to more authoritative sites. While it used to be recommended that blog posts hover around 300 words, now the minimum is 500, and 1,000 is desirable.
A tablet reader might also be willing to read your 1,000 word post about your head chef’s trip to Italy, but the person riding the bus to your restaurant would rather see what the cross street is for your location, what’s on the menu and how much this whole evening might cost them.
This means there’s a big gulf between organizing content for the web and organizing content for mobile.
Here are some tips on making your site phone friendly:
- Don’t ditch the longer content on your mobile site. It doesn’t need to be front and centre, but people will still expect to find all the same information that they can find on your website.
- Be scannable. Use lots of bullet points, subheads and other design elements that make your site easy to read. While scanning is very popular on the web, it’s even more necessary on mobile.
- Make navigation simple. Menu items need to be clear and intuitive. Don’t expect people to guess what’s behind that button with the clever caption.
- Expose yourself. If you are a brick and mortar local business, make your home page simple and include a clear summary of what you offer, your contact information and a navigational map. Don’t expect people to scroll too far down to find your location. They might just hit the back button to return to the search results.
- Research the data. What are people searching for when they arrive at your site? If it’s a service you offer include it on the home page so customers can easily choose your company.
- Be social. Social media is hugely popular on mobile. Include your follow buttons prominently so that customers can quickly add your business to their feeds.