According to a new survey created by Nielson and Google 55 percent of mobile triggered follow-up actions happen within an hour. That means when mobile users bring up your site on their phones they are likely to make a visit to your store, call you, or make a purchase within the next 60 minutes. Mobile searches are happening all the time and if your company doesn’t have content that drives these users to a call-to-action, you could be losing out on business.
Let’s take a look at how recent research from the Google study helps us to understand how to craft our content around the mobile consumer.
Speed and Convenience
The last time you used your cell phone to go online what were your primary motivations? According to the research done in this study 81 percent of mobile searches are driven by speed and convenience. In fact 77 percent of mobile searches happen in places where there are PCs nearby. Lots of people are searching with their smartphones at home and at work because it is quicker and easier than loading up the nearby PC and getting online.
When centering your content around the mobile consumer take a look at how the most important information is displayed on a mobile device and how quickly it can be accessed. Can a consumer find your address immediately or do they have to scroll around? How about your product or service pages? Can those be navigated to easily and do the pages load fast?
Make it Easy for Users to Take the Next Action
Mobile searches lead to almost two follow-up actions on average. These actions include making the decision to visit a store or website, make a purchase or call a business. Sometimes these actions include a combination of two or more of these activities. The beauty of mobile search is that the intent of the user is to make a decision fast: 55 percent of purchase-related decisions happen within one hour of the initial mobile search.
The more effort you place into your mobile website to make sure users can take actions the greater chance you have of those users actually doing so. Consider the intent of the majority of your users – make a purchase, find the address, find the phone number – and craft your mobile website so that those actions can happen as seamlessly as possible.
When Considering Ads
The Google/Neilson study also included a segment on ads. Considering Google makes the bulk of its profit from ad revenues it is not surprising to see this data presented. Regardless, the numbers are revealing:
- 65 percent of those surveyed mentioned they noticed ads during their searches
- Users are more likely to notice ads when they are in-store
- Mobile ads are most effective when users make goal-oriented searches (need product info, deciding on purchase, etc)
Surprisingly, 59 percent of survey respondents said that they found mobile ads useful for a few reasons:
- They are to the point
- The tended to load quickly
- They provided relevant information
This makes a compelling argument for the use of website owners to utilize ads in addition to paying attention to load speed and action-oriented processes. Ads can be placed on competitive websites as well and may help to guide potential customers over to your website right at the point where they are looking to make a purchasing decision.
Overview of Mobile Content
Mobile users are concerned about convenience and will use their mobile phones to do searches even when they have a PC available to them. All searches can be convenient but it is up to you, the website owner, to ensure that your mobile site provides a speedy process. Mobile websites that take long times to load are likely to turn potential customers off resulting in lost sales. In addition to quickly loading sites, users are concerned about getting the information they need quickly. Thus mobile websites should be centered around the decisions they know their users are looking to make: visit the store, make a purchase, call the business, visit the retailer website.
Mobile ads are also an important component of mobile search particularly when users are making goal oriented searches such as seeking product or service info or deciding on purchases. Strategically positioned ads that are based on user intent may be a worthwhile investment should your users be in the goal-oriented research process.
Take a moment to review your mobile website and see if it matches up with the data from the Google/Neilson study. Chances are you can make some improvements to your mobile site to improve mobile conversions and capture more leads.
