One thing that cannot be emphasized enough in today’s digital marketing environment is the importance of placing mobile visitors at the front of your strategy. Mobile-only internet users now outnumber PC-only users, and search engines are increasingly adjusting their algorithms to prioritize mobile-friendly sites.
When you hear talk of being “mobile-friendly,” this usually refers to the need for sites to have a responsive design, which dynamically resizes and adapts to the size of the screen it is being viewed upon. To be sure, this is critical. But there are other steps your business can take to better engage visitors from smart phones and tablets. In doing so, you can set your website apart from the competition and stand out more to a growing, crucial subset of Web users.
1) Use “Click To Call” as a means to contact your company
Traditional contact forms aren’t always as effective for mobile visitors who are on the go and may lack the time to fill out multiple fields or send an email. The beauty of “click-to-call,” which automatically initiates a phone call to a designated number from the user’s device once pressed, is that it creates a direct line of communication with literally one click. Even though smart phones and tablets are by nature very modern gadgets, many of their operators still prefer to hear a voice and interact with an actual person as opposed to typing emails and waiting for a reply.
Google offers click-to-call functionality for ads run on its network, and has reported tremendous response, with 70 percent of mobile searchers clicking to call a business directly from search results.
2) Adjust form input attributes to be geared toward mobile users
This is a coding consideration, but a fairly simple one. When you place forms on your page, you can add input attributes for the fields within your site’s code to turn on auto-capitalize and turn off auto-correct. This improves the user experience for mobile visitors substantially. Typing on a phone screen is hard enough without needing to manually capitalize the first letters of names and addresses; similarly, auto-correct can be a huge pain when people are trying to enter proper nouns into a form. This is a subtle touch that may impress and delight people perusing your website.
Courtesy of David Walsh, here’s a quick guide on how to implement these settings on your site.
3) Bite-sized everything
When it comes to the proper length for copy, video and other forms of content, there is a balance to be struck. On the one hand, you want to provide a lot of information so that anyone who is interested in your company or the insights you provide can dig deep and stick around the site. Additionally, a higher volume of content means there is more for Web crawlers to search and index, thus increasing your SEO impact. But on the other hand, internet users tend to have a short attention span — particularly mobile users. Chunks of text that seem somewhat long on a desktop monitor or laptop can be overwhelming when scrolled through on a smart phone. For this season, it is advised to offer short and digestible summaries of your services and any key info, with the ability to click to another page or trigger a drop-down for more in-depth material.
We Are Mobile-Friendly!
Want to implement more mobile-friendly aspects to your site’s design and functionality? Give us a shout and we’ll help you reach and connect with mobile users. From design to content to technical wizardry, the experts at TSM know how to optimize websites for all visitors.
