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Discover What Mobile Users Really Want From A Mobile Website

October 8, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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Mobile Websites: Give The Mobile User What They Want And Not What You Think They Want

In the following piece (original post), we are told exactly what mobile users want by Masha Fisch, from Google’s Mobile Ads Marketing department.

Earlier this week we shared how today’s consumers expect more — much more — from mobile sites. They told us so in our recent research survey, What Users Want Most From Mobile Sites Today.

Today we’ll share more results, with some great examples of businesses giving mobile users what they want. Whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or the pizza shop down on the corner, creating a mobile-friendly site is a critical step: 67% of mobile users say that they’re more likely to buy a product or service from a mobile-friendly site, and 74% say they’re more likely to return to that site in the future.

How are smart companies making mobile sites work for them?

Less is more: ProFlowers 
For their new mobile site, the flower retailer ProFlowers simplified things by highlighting the most popular bouquets to reduce scrolling, by trimming text, and by cutting checkout steps. How well has it worked? “Since becoming mobile-friendly, we’ve seen our mobile conversion rate jump by 20–30%,” says Leif Heikkila, the company’s senior director of online marketing. Download the case study.

Bigger is better: FragranceNet.com
FragranceNet sells perfumes and colognes, yes, but also face creams, shampoos, eyeliner and more. For Michael Nadboy, the company’s VP of online marketing and strategic development, the trick to mobile success was to show bigger product images and buttons, larger font sizes, and fewer images overall. Mobile users loved it: FragranceNet boosted mobile sales by 48% in just four months. Download the case study.

Speed sells: TicketNetwork
Rock concerts, Broadway shows, NASCAR races: TicketNetwork’s mobile site helps on-the-go fans find tickets for them all. The company redesigned its mobile site with speed in mind, stripping away all non-essential content and graphics. They also trimmed steps from the checkout process to help mobile users buy fast. Four months after introducing the new mobile site, web traffic from mobile devices was up 120% and overall sales from mobile had grown by 184%. Download the case study.

You can see the keys to mobile site success: big buttons and text, less content, fewer steps to checkout, and a focus on speed.

What kind of mobile content is most important? The users we surveyed listed “Get directions”, “Find operating hours” and “Click to call the business” as some of their most-wanted mobile tasks. They also showed clear differences in mobile usage by business category. For instance:

Mobile Banking and Finance customers are most interested in checking account balances, transferring money and paying bills.

Mobile Travel customers are most interested in checking flight status and confirming reservations.

Mobile Retail customers like to contact a store and find product information.

Mobile Automotive customers are most interested in contacting the dealership and making service appointments.

The bottom line: mobile users are ready to make choices on the go. Help them get there fast and you’ll help your business grow.

We reviewed these findings yesterday during our webinar: Mobilize your Site and Maximize your Advertising. If you missed it, please keep an eye out for the recorded webinar, which we’ll post soon.

In the meantime, check out howtogomo.com for more tips on how to build a mobile-friendly website.

Posted by: Masha Fisch, Google Mobile Ads Marketing

Google Retail Blog

Filed Under: Mobile Tagged With: , , ,

Mobile And Video Are Helping People Shop

October 8, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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Is Your Business Mobile Ready And Using Video?

The below article by Todd Pollak, Industry Director, Retail, Google, shows how much people are now using their mobile phones for more than speaking with people and texting. Not only are more people using their mobile phones to search the internet, but by 2013, mobile phone usage is set to grow and outsell PC’s and laptops. For more information on this, click here.

Today, shopping is no longer limited to the mall – it happens at home, waiting in line, or at the doctor’s office. If you’re armed with a smartphone, every moment is now a shopping opportunity. As retailers gear up for Christmas, we took to the digital Main Street to find out how consumer shopping patterns have changed. Focusing on apparel shopping, we analyzed consumer shopping behavior from the point of sale backward, and surveyed apparel shoppers to understand shopping trends.

We found that not only is online research playing an integral role than in both online and in-store purchases, consumers are increasingly shopping on their mobile devices and using online video to inform purchase decisions. In fact, 4 in 10 shoppers visited a store online or in-person as a direct result of watching a video online. Here are a few highlights from the report:

Mobile devices bring the mall to you
Mobile shopping is not a sporadic activity limited to weekend trips to the mall. It’s constant and pervasive. More than 1 in 5 apparel consumers are using their tablets or mobile devices on a daily basis for shopping. People are shopping on their mobile devices throughout all parts of the day – and not just while on-the-go. More than 69% of consumers shopped on their phone or tablet while at home, 31% while in a store, 28% while waiting in line, and 27% while at work.

People are using their mobile devices as shopping assistants by informing purchase decisions and helping them locate the best deal. Of people that shop on their mobile device, 56% compare prices and look for promotions, 42% read reviews, 38% search inventory, 16% scan bar code while in store, and 13% contact the retailer.

Video is the virtual fitting room
Aspects such as fit and quality – easily apparent in person – become harder to grasp when shopping online. Video has now filled the role as the virtual fitting room, enabling shoppers to hear personal opinions and reviews, and see the product in motion. In fact, video has become so influential that 4 in 10 shoppers visited a store online or in-person as a direct result of watching a video. Today, nearly 1 in 3 shoppers use YouTube to shop for apparel.So it’s no surprise that video ads top traditional media in encouraging purchases. Thirty-four percent of apparel shoppers are more likely to purchase after viewing an online video ad, versus 16% after watching an ad on TV.

Millennials (aged 18-34) are twice as likely than other age groups to rely on a video to decide which company to purchase from, and are regularly turning to YouTube for shopping advice. YouTube vloggers posting their latest shopping finds aren’t just sharing their recommendations with close friends, they’re sharing with an audience of thousands of subscribers and millions of views – MacBarbie07, a popular YouTube partner, has more than 100M views of her styling tips. And this fall we’re seeing even more shopping reviews on YouTube – there are nearly 600,000 shopping “haul” videos on YouTube, more than 35,000 of which were uploaded within the last month alone.

Digital shoppers are valuable customers
People who shop on their mobile devices and research with video tend to not only spend more on average purchases, but do so more frequently. We found that 1 in 4 mobile researchers purchased apparel more than 6 times in the past 6 months (versus 16% of non-mobile researchers). And 28% of video researchers spent more than $ 500 on apparel in the past 6 months, while only 2% of non-video researchers did.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. In the next 5 years we’ll see a bigger change to shopping than we’ve seen in the past 50.Download the full report for more insight into this year’s shopping trends. Visit Think with Google to learn how you can leverage these digital trends for your marketing strategy this year.

Posted by Todd Pollak, Industry Director, Retail, Google

Google Mobile Ads Blog

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Part 4 – Mobile Website Optimisation: 10 Tips to Make Mobile Conversions Easier

July 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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This is the last part (1 of 4) of the Mobile Website Optimisation series by Shane Cassells, from Google’s Conversion Team.

The previous three posts covered are:

Part 1: Mobile Website Optimisation : Content Consideration

Part 2: Mobile Website Optimisation : White Space

Part 3: Mobile Website Optimisation : Designing Buttons

<h3>Mobile Website Optimisation : Increase Conversion Rate</h3>

In Summary: Making it easy to convert on a mobile device is key to maximising conversion rate. Mobile conversions must play to the strengths of mobile devices and simply replicating the desktop experience is often not enough.

As in previous posts in this series, I invite readers to think about the way the mobile user experience is different from desktop. On desktop, many conversion funnels require visitors to jump through a series of hoops (often forms) before the visitor can become a customer. While this is often an unsatisfactory experience for a person with a mouse and a keyboard, mobile visitors are even less likely to put up with this in order to convert.

Mobile devices are increasingly touchscreen and the majority of smartphones have only a virtual keyboard. Mobile users also don’t have the speed of multi-finger typing and many will enter data solely with relatively large unwieldy thumbs. While there are vehicles for data-entry specific to mobile which can really help, like voice entry and text completion, these methods are rarely useful when a visitor is using uncommon language such as when they are entering a postal address or email address.

So, how do we help mobile users complete a conversion or even partially complete? By partially completing a conversion I mean allowing them to perform an action that they can complete conveniently through another medium. Here are some ways that can help make mobile conversions easier:

Have a Single Customer Experience Across all Platforms

The means by which visitors can interact with your site are varied. Mobile users will be using small screens and their thumbs; tablet users will be using medium size screens and their fingers; and desktop users will be using medium to large screens and a mouse and keyboard. However, it should be possible for a visitor to begin the conversion process on one platform and complete it on any of the others. This is what we mean by a single customer experience. For example, with amazon.co.uk a visitor can login to their account on a desktop and start adding things to their shopping cart. If they need to leave their desktop, they can simply login to their account on their mobile device and complete the transactions while they’re on the move. And this functionality is not limited to ecommerce websites. On autotrader.co.uk a visitor can add a car they are interest in to their garage on their desktop and then open their garage on mobile or tablet and find the same car there as they travel to see it.

On Amazon.co.uk, it is possible to begin a conversion on one device and complete it on another

Allow Visitors to Save Searches

The ability to save searches can be particularly useful for travel or local website owners but really it is suited to any website where a user is likely to search for the same things repeatedly. In the case of travel, it is not unusual for visitors to have favourite destinations or even for them to re-visit a site multiple times before completing a purchase. Or a take-away restaurant is likely visited time and again by users who have a favourite meal. Allowing visitors to save their searches makes the journey to their regular purchases that little bit easier. If the visitor doesn’t have an account, make it easy for them to save searches by just adding an email address or use cookies to remember the last search they completed.

Have Clear Calls To Action

This one stands to reason everywhere but it is still a barrier to conversion on many sites. Often the website owner has provided too many conversion options or not clearly enough labeled to the visitor where they are expected to go next. Avoid using multiple conversion options and use button colour and size to clearly indicate to a visitor what you want them to do next.

On Mothercare.com, the call-to-action is clear and easy to find

Allow Visitors to Save Baskets

For website owners with a basket for their visitors to fill prior to checking-out, it is a good idea if those visitors can save their baskets for their return or even for them to access the basket again from another platform. This will also encourage cross-platform purchases. Easy account login is imperative for this to work. Have an account login button on every page and keep login simple. If a visitor doesn’t have an account and is not making an immediate purchase, entering their name and email address should be sufficient for them to save their basket and access it again elsewehere.

Keep Forms Short

The best way to ensure that conversions are easy is to make sure that all forms are only as long as absolutely necessary. Get your conversions in before asking irrelevant marketing or cross-sales questions. By keeping forms short you can make conversion on a mobile device much easier indeed.

Use Top-Aligned Labels

When a mobile phone user taps on a form field, very often the browser zooms in to that field. Mobile devices are also long but narrow when vertically orientated. Thus, having form field labels to the left as is common on desktop is less feasible. By implementing field descriptions above the field it is easier for a visitor to see where they are and it allows more space for form fields.

Booking.com uses top-aligned labels in their checkout

Use HTML5 for Form Fields

By using HTML5 in form fields, it is possible to help users to complete those fields more efficiently. For example, a field for telephone number will be filled using the number keypad. Find a simple introduction to HTML5 in plain English here.

Use Check Boxes, Lists & Scroll Menus

Data entry needs to be kept to a minimum when a user has only their finger or thumb and a virtual keyboard to help them. By using check boxes, lists and scroll menus to make data entry easier, you will be helping the visitor to proceed through the conversion process. However, it is important not to give a visitor too many options in these lists or they may be less decisive.

Implement Click-to-Call

Mobile users are much more likely to make a phone call than a desktop user. If your business converts over a telephone line, make sure that all references to phone numbers on your website are tagged for click-to-call and where possible make those links into buttons.

RAC.co.uk have implemented click-to-call buttons for their breakdown service

Use Geo-Technology for Offline Conversions

A key difference between mobile and desktop users is that mobile users are using a device with location based technology. Where a conversion can take place offline, it is advisable to use this technology to help a visitor find their way to your store. In such cases it can be useful for there to be a stock checking functionality on the page and a button which will link to directions, preferably with a map, to the nearest store with the product(s) in stock. If you wish to track purchases which began on a phone, consider allowing visitors to reserve products in advance and attributing a unique tracking code to each reservation. Or to encourage quick offline sales, you might also consider having a discount code for mobile shoppers who come to the shop and convert quickly.

So, in summary, 10 ways to make conversion completions easy from a mobile device include:

  • Have a Single Customer Experience across Channels
  • Allow Saved Searches
  • Have Clear Calls to Action
  • Allow Saved Baskets
  • Keep Forms Short
  • Use Top Aligned Labels
  • Use HTML5 in Form Fields
  • Use Check Boxes, Lists & Scroll Menus
  • Implement Click-To-Call
  • Use Geo-Technology for Offline Conversions

Mobile Website Testing Tip:

When you are building your mobile site, test it on different devices to make sure it looks well on different sized screens. Check out this tool to replicate phones from different operating systems on your desktop.

In my next post, I will be looking at best practices for Search & Refinement on mobile websites. If you have a comment, please post it.

Posted by Shane Cassells, Google Conversion Team

Conversion Room

Filed Under: Mobile Website Optimisation Tagged With: , , , ,

Part 3: Mobile Website Optimisation – 7 Considerations When Designing Buttons on Mobile Websites

July 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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This is the third article in the series by Shane Cassells, Google Conversion Team, on Mobile Website Optimisation. In this post, Shane discusses the considerations that need to be taken when designing buttons for mobile websites.

In short, he concludes that buttons on mobile sites should be:

  • Big
  • Isolated
  • Reachable
  • Padded
  • Obvious
  • Prioritised
  • Descriptive

This is the third post in a series on optimising mobile websites for conversions. The previous two posts covered Content Prioritisation and White Space

In Summary: Buttons rule on mobile devices. The rule of thumb means that big, well spaced buttons with clear calls to action will likely result in more conversions.

Before looking at how buttons can make the mobile user experience better we must first understand the way mobile users navigate. Think about the way you hold your phone. More often than not it’s in just one hand and because your fingers are gripping the phone from behind, you are left only with your thumb for navigation of the screen. The thumb is far less precise than a mouse pointer.

As you can see from this image, fingers are behind the phone leaving the thumb to do all the work.

The Mobile Rule of Thumb: If it cannot be done with the thumb, it cannot be done.

The hyperlink is a poor user experience on a touchscreen mobile device because it is very hard to use with an imprecise instrument like the human thumb. If that’s not all, mobile devices are often used by people on the move, so hitting a small point on the screen is just getting harder and harder. The best way to alleviate these issues is to build your links into big buttons which allow for greater levels of inaccuracy.

Here are are a few things to consider when building button links:

Buttons Should be Big

In a recent study of iPad users, Jakob Nielsen, the father of human computer interaction studies, recommends that buttons be at least 1cm x 1cm in diameter. That’s 28px assuming the standard web resolution of 72dpi. There’s a lot of debate around this area.

Apple is recommending 44×44 at a minimum for buttons in apps.

A very interesting introduction to designing for different screen sizes on Android can be found here.

This is something you really need to test when building your site. Without a mouse or even a stylus, buttons need to be big. Put simply, you should build buttons for thumbs. And err towards large thumbs. There is also the issue of light. Many mobile screens perform poorly in daylight or bright light environments – big buttons make it easier to perform tasks while visibility is low.

Buttons Should be Isolated

How many times have you tried to click a button on a mobile device only to find that you have inadvertently clicked something else? It can be a really painful experience and is also a sure-fire way of making a user give up in frustration and go somewhere else. One way to avoid accidental clicks is to ensure that buttons have a little space between them. Call-to-action buttons especially should be isolated. Where possible, leave a little white space around buttons.

Buttons Should be Reachable

The placement of your buttons is also important. Just as we need to consider big thumbs for button size, we need to think about what is comfortable for thumbs when placing buttons. The standard navigation button is across the whole page on mobile sites so it isn’t really an issue but many mobile sites have call-to-action buttons which are shorter and sit on one side of the screen or the other. If possible, these buttons should be made longer and centred more. Not only does that make them larger but it’s easier for both left and right handed people to reach the buttons with their thumb. If you must choose a side of the screen, contrary to the right side placement often found on desktop, it is actually more comfortable for a right-handed thumb (the majority of users) to click a button on the left side of the screen.

Kiddicare.com found button placement on the left side of the screen was easier for users than the right

Smaller Buttons Should be Padded

Padding refers to making clickable an area larger than the button itself. This can be especially useful for check boxes or buttons that need to be smaller so as not to draw attention away from the main call-to action. The trick is to make the area immediately around the button clickable as well. In the case of check boxes, it is important to leave sufficient space between boxes and then to make the text next to the box clickable too.

Buttons Should Look Like Buttons

This might seem like common sense but it is not unusual to find links on mobile sites which behave like buttons but do not look like them. Whether it is a link that looks the same as the text around it or a button that looks like a heading, the user needs some form of visual cue to help them understand where to click. Make buttons look three dimensional and they are more likely to invite clicks. It is also important that your site clearly indicates to a user which button they have clicked. Some sites do this really well, but others are a little patchy. Touching any part of a button should result in a visual signal for the user.


In the example above, the Filter link behaves like a button but looks like the rest of the text, so some users will miss that.

Buttons Should be Prioritised

In much the same way as we do with desktop sites, buttons on mobile devices need to be prioritised. Visual cues like size and colour will help users to identify where they need to click. If we are making all buttons big to allow for thumbs, then colour becomes even more important. Try to have a different coloured button for the main call to action. Other important links should still be buttons – just not as obvious

Buttons Should Use Descriptive Text

This is not just a convention of mobile but it is still very important. The text we use on buttons will set the expectations of the users clicking on them. It is important that the text be clear and that it conforms to an action the user is taking. Button text should complete the statement “I would like to…” and begin with a verb. It should also consider the point the user is at in their journey through the site. ‘Buy Now’ buttons on the homepage are generally inappropriate. “Shop Now” is often a better call to action so early in the visit. There is never a time when ‘Click Here’ or other such terms are ideal because they set no expectations for the user.

Why use buttons? Imagine the difficulty of picking the right link in the example above.

So does this mean we can never use hyperlinks? Of course you can. But you should use them minimally and don’t put lots of them into the same space. As a rule, try to have no more than one link per band of text. For example, In the point above about making buttons big enough, I have spread the points with links across multiple lines to make it easier for touchscreen users to tap them on the mobile version of this blog.

Of course when it comes to a mobile site which is trying to convert visitors into customers, try not to have much text.

In summary, buttons on mobile sites should be:

  • Big
  • Isolated
  • Reachable
  • Padded
  • Obvious
  • Prioritised
  • Descriptive

Buttons that have been well thought out and follow the guidelines above should help increase conversions on your mobile website.

Mobile Website Testing Tip: When you are building your mobile site, physically test it while you are in motion to best replicate the real-world user experience.

The next post will be looking at how to make conversions easier to complete on a mobile website. If you have feedback, please leave a comment.

Posted by Shane Cassells, Google Conversion Team

Conversion Room

Filed Under: Mobile Website Optimisation Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Part 2: Mobile Website Optimisation – How Effective Use of White Space Can Improve the Mobile Website Experience

July 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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This article continues from the first part, which discussed the mobile website optimisation and what considerations are needed for content on a mobile website.

To briefly summarise this post, 4 points are needed to bare in mind when creating a layout for your mobile site:

  • Mobile sites should not be cluttered
  • Remove unnecessary elements which take up space and data
  • Use bullet points instead of paragraphs for text
  • Have a light background to your site

This is the second post in a series on optimising mobile websites for conversions.

In Summary: Uncluttered mobile sites with minimal but meaningful information which is visible to users on the go is key to maximising conversions on mobile devices.

Mobile devices have small screens. The larger ones have about 640×960 pixel resolution (or 4in/10cm diameter). When you compare that with a desktop computer screen it’s not very big. So how do you ensure that a user on a small screen gets to see all of the things they would see on a desktop version of your site? You don’t. In this post we will be focusing on using white space as a means to making mobile websites feel intuitive and uncluttered.

Do Not Overcrowd the Screen: As covered in the last post on content prioritisation, a big part of mobile site building involves stripping out as much detail as possible. Mobile users are task oriented so they only need the details necessary to complete a task quickly. Speed is important and the way you present the information on your site will impact heavily on the speed with which a user can digest it. It might seem counter-intuitive when the screen is so small and you have so much to say but pushing lots of information and too many options at your users will push them away from a conversion. Prioritised content combined with effective use of white space leads to a better mobile experience.

Banners, Pictures & Videos: Desktop sites are generally overburdened with banners, pictures & videos but it’s easier to get away with that when you have a big screen and a fast broadband connection. Real estate is precious on a mobile device so only use small pictures – but pictures are still recommended. You can make it possible for a user to click on pictures to increase the size but it should be a user choice. Banners should be kept to an absolute minimum or even removed altogether. If you are using a banner it should only be a conversion reinforcement banner such as highlighting a delivery or returns policy. You can also use banner advertisements if that is the way you monetise your site. Videos can contribute effectively to a conversion, particularly a brand oriented one. However, where a video is not necessary and is even distracting, it should not be included. If you’re unsure, test it with a tool like Google Website Optimiser to see what impact video has for your mobile site.

Bullet Points: Desktop users generally will not read lots of text. Mobile users are even less likely to. All paragraphs of text should be removed and replaced with clear concise bullet points. Mobile user’s often read at arms length so the text should also be large enough and clear enough to facilitate this. A great way of doing so is to ensure that there’s not a lot to read. Where bands of text are unavoidable, it should be possible for users to hide or expand the text or to get more information on tabs. Use headlines that summarise the text that follows so a user can still convert without reading everything.

The m.wikipedia.org. site allows users to choose what text they want to see
White Space is Light Space: Dark backgrounds are a bad experience even on a desktop but on a mobile site they can be devastating to conversions. Mobile users are on the go and when they are outside in daylight situations background colour is very important. Try using a projector in a bright room with the curtains drawn and the light splashing onto the screen. If your slides have a dark background you won’t see them. If they have a white background with black text, it won’t be a problem. That is the same experience on a macro level as a user trying to use a website with a dark background on a mobile device outside. It might look cool when you’re building it in a lab, but it’s not a great experience. Users can increase the brightness of their display but that will place greater strain on the battery.

White space (also called negative space) doesn’t have to be white but it should be pale so that high contrast text and images placed against it are visible even in poor light. Using a picture as a background is also not recommended. Again, remember that users are often on the go and reading at a distance.

White space also helps when building sites to fit multiple devices of varying resolutions. The more white space, the less likely your site will look cramped or stretched on different devices. Of course, it’s also a good idea to design your site with multiple resolutions in mind.

This site uses a light background and uncluttered space to great effect.
To summarise, 4 points to keep in mind when creating a layout for your mobile site:

  • Mobile sites should not be cluttered
  • Remove unnecessary elements which take up space and data
  • Use bullet points instead of paragraphs for text
  • Have a light background to your site

Mobile Website Testing Tip: When you are building your mobile site, test it in different light levels to best replicate the user experience.

The next post will be looking at how big buttons can make mobile website conversion a whole lot easier. If you have feedback, please leave a comment.

Posted by Shane Cassells, Google Conversion Team

Filed Under: Mobile Website Optimisation Tagged With: ,

Part 1: Mobile Website Optimisation – 5 Considerations when Prioritising Content

July 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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I came across an interesting series of four articles from Google, about Mobile Site Optimisation, so I thought you may find these both interesting and helpful whe it comes to converting your webistes to mobile optimised websites.

The following article is by Shane Cassells, Google Conversion Team, and describes what you need to consider when prioritising content for a mobile website. To summarise, the article discusses the following points:

  • Build for task oriented users
  • Make site navigation fast
  • Have a visible search box
  • Layout content for scrolling
  • Build for online/offline experience

Mobile Website Design Considerations

According to research firm International Data Corporation (IDC), the Western European mobile phone market grew 7.5% year on year to 50.7 million units in 3Q10. Shipments of smartphones increased to 19 million units, 109% higher than the previous year’s third quarter, to represent 37% of total shipments. More and more users are moving to mobile devices capable of a full internet experience and so it is growing even more important than ever that mobile optimised websites be built to capture this growing market of users.

This is the first post in a series on optimising mobile websites for conversions. This post focuses on content prioritisation as a means to making mobile websites quick and easy to use.

In Summary: Mobile website content needs to be prioritised for multi-tasking users on the move. Everything that helps a user to convert quickly and easily should be included. Everything else is surplus to requirements.

To understand how we should think about the content to be placed on mobile handheld devices we must first think about how these devices are used. A key to this is in the very description we use – mobile. Mobile device users are on the move. They are usually in a hurry and are accessing the net at times which are convenient to them and often for short periods only.


Desktop websites need to be optimised for small screen hand-held devices
Mobile users are task oriented. Mobile is about fast access to information and services – whatever tasks can be completed by your service quickly and on the go will be the target features for mobile users. When choosing mobile website content, focus on features which are local, mobile and easy to complete. Take a look at your website analytics and use an advanced segment for mobile users to see how they have been using the desktop features on your site. This will give you an insight into the kinds of services mobile users will want to access most on your mobile site.

Mobile users seek speedy answers. Quick convenient conversions are important to mobile users and latency is not tolerated. If a site is taking a while to load, attention may quickly move to something else. Mobile optimised sites are stripped of extraneous content as well as most advertising, videos, pictures and banners – unless they are necessary for a conversion. Flash should be avoided. Data download and streaming speeds are much slower than most home/office broadband connections. By prioritising content and building for smaller screens, it is possible to make your website accessible to users quickly.

Mobile users are likely to search. With mobile devices there is little room for navigation bars and drop down menus. Mobile users are in a hurry so they will often search rather than navigate. The search box should be big and obvious, near the top of the page. Make the search box large enough that a user can easily tap it using their thumb. Results should be easily filtered.

Mobile users scroll through content. Users will still scan but they will do so from top to bottom, scrolling with their thumb to access more information. This is becoming a convention of mobile. If your site layout obviously follows this convention, users will not think twice about scrolling. As with a desktop site, prioritise your content so that the most important features are seen first. It is also a good idea to put important information or buttons at the bottom of a page, particularly when the page is very long. Many mobile users will scroll really quickly to the bottom of a page if they don’t find what they need at the top.

Mobile users are online and offline. If you have a bricks and mortar store, mobile users may access their handsets to improve their offline experience. Store location, directions, product availability, product reservation and creating shopping lists are all things that the mobile user will need to be able to access easily on your site.

Source: eMarketer.com

To summarise, 5 points to keep in mind when prioritising content for mobile:

  • Build for task oriented users
  • Make site navigation fast
  • Have a visible search box
  • Layout content for scrolling
  • Build for online/offline experience

The next post will be looking at how to use white space to improve the experience for users of a mobile website. If you have feedback, please leave a comment.

Posted By Shane Cassells, Google Conversion Team

Filed Under: Mobile Website Optimisation Tagged With: , ,

Recommendations for building smartphone-optimized websites

July 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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Does Your Business Have A Website That Is Optimised For mobile Phones?

If the answer to the above question is NO, then you NEED to read the following article by Pierre Far, Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst.

More and more people are using their smartphones, whether it be an Apple OS, Android or Windows phone, to search for products or services online. This becomes even more important if you have a local brick-and-mortar business or you offer a local service, such as a plumber etc.

Webmaster level: All

Every day more and more smartphones get activated and more websites are producing smartphone-optimized content. Since we last talked about how to build mobile-friendly websites, we’ve been working hard on improving Google’s support for smartphone-optimized content. As part of this effort, we launched Googlebot-Mobile for smartphones back in December 2011, which is specifically tasked with identifying such content.

Today we’d like to give you Google’s recommendations for building smartphone-optimized websites and explain how to do so in a way that gives both your desktop- and smartphone-optimized sites the best chance of performing well in Google’s search results.

Recommendations for smartphone-optimized sites

The full details of our recommendation can be found in our new help site, which we now summarize.

When building a website that targets smartphones, Google supports three different configurations:

  1. Sites that use responsive web design, i.e. sites that serve all devices on the same set of URLs, with each URL serving the same HTML to all devices and using just CSS to change how the page is rendered on the device. This is Google’s recommended configuration.
  2. Sites that dynamically serve all devices on the same set of URLs, but each URL serves different HTML (and CSS) depending on whether the user agent is a desktop or a mobile device.
  3. Sites that have a separate mobile and desktop sites.

Responsive web design

Responsive web design is a technique to build web pages that alter how they look using CSS3 media queries. That is, there is one HTML code for the page regardless of the device accessing it, but its presentation changes using CSS media queries to specify which CSS rules apply for the browser displaying the page. You can learn more about responsive web design from this blog post by Google’s webmasters and in our recommendations.

Using responsive web design has multiple advantages, including:

  • It keeps your desktop and mobile content on a single URL, which is easier for your users to interact with, share, and link to and for Google’s algorithms to assign the indexing properties to your content.
  • Google can discover your content more efficiently as we wouldn’t need to crawl a page with the different Googlebot user agents to retrieve and index all the content.

Device-specific HTML

However, we appreciate that for many situations it may not be possible or appropriate to use responsive web design. That’s why we support having websites serve equivalent content using different, device-specific, HTML. The device-specific HTML can be served on the same URL (a configuration called dynamic serving) or different URLs (such as www.example.com and m.example.com).

If your website uses a dynamic serving configuration, we strongly recommend using the Vary HTTP header to communicate to caching servers and our algorithms that the content may change for different user agents requesting the page. We also use this as a crawling signal for Googlebot-Mobile. More details are here.

As for the separate mobile site configuration, since there are many ways to do this, our recommendation introduces annotations that communicate to our algorithms that your desktop and mobile pages are equivalent in purpose; that is, the new annotations describe the relationship between the desktop and mobile content as alternatives of each other and should be treated as a single entity with each alternative targeting a specific class of device.

These annotations will help us discover your smartphone-optimized content and help our algorithms understand the structure of your content, giving it the best chance of performing well in our search results.

Conclusion

This blog post is only a brief summary of our recommendation for building smartphone-optimized websites. Please read the full recommendation and see which supported implementation is most suitable for your site and users. And, as always, please ask on our Webmaster Help forums if you have more questions.

Posted by , Webmaster Trends Analyst


Google Webmaster Central Blog

Filed Under: Mobile Tagged With: , , , ,

Find places faster with quick access to local info on the go

June 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Increase your business with more online customers with help from SEO Consultants London.

Local Search On Mobile Phones

Dan Zivkovic, Software Engineer at Google, talks about how it is becoming faster to search for local businesses on your mobile phone:

I’ll admit it, I’m a bit of a picky eater. If I’m choosing a restaurant, I want to know that it has good reviews, that they’ll have food items I like, that it’s not too expensive, and all that. With the new changes to the local listings in search on mobile devices, now I’ll be able to see more details about places quickly and make decisions more easily — whether about restaurants or any other type of place.

For example, if I search for [restaurants dallas] on my mobile phone now, I’m presented with a list of local results as usual. Now, if I click on the name of the place, I instantly see a summary of the business, with reviews, photos, and more details, similar to the local information you see when searching on your computer. Okay, this place looks fine, but what about the other results from the list? With a simple swipe of the page left or right, I can see the local result before or after this one, to quickly compare the different options and make a decision on where to eat.

This is available worldwide on Android and iOS devices. Now I can’t wait to go traveling and try this out when I’m hungry elsewhere in the world!

Posted by Dan Zivkovic, Software Engineer


Inside Search

Filed Under: Mobile Local Search Tagged With: , , , ,

Making Mobile-Friendly Websites – Webinar Recording

May 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Increase your business with more online customers with help from SEO Consultants London.

Building Mobile Websites

Check out the recording by Shane Cassells of Google’s Conversion Team, about building mobile friendly websites:

In March I presented a webinar on building mobile-friendly websites with UK site examples. There was a large turnout of website owners but there have also been a lot of calls for copies of the recording so I’m including the link here for those of you who are interested.

So, if you like to get your updates aurally and visually rather than having to read it all yourself, check out the webinar.

Summary of Contents:

  • The mobile momentum
  • Why mobile sites matter
  • 10 mobile site best practices
  • Best practices in action
  • Build a mobile website



If you have feedback or questions, please leave a comment.


Posted by Shane Cassells, Google Conversion Team


Conversion Room

Filed Under: Mobile Tagged With: , , , , , ,

GoMo: More Mobile Sites Mean More Business in Mobile, AL

March 20, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Increase your business with more online customers with help from SEO Consultants London.

It’s been four months since Google and its technology partners DudaMobile and Mobify provided over 500 Mobile, AL small businesses with free mobile-friendly sites.  The event was part of Google’s GoMo initiative, and provided small business owners with an opportunity to build sites made for the small screen complete with mobile-friendly features like click-to-call and click-to-map.  The Google team followed up with some of the business owners to see how the new mobile-friendly sites have helped their businesses grow.  Simply put, mobile-friendly sites drive results.  Check out how mobile-friendly sites helped to improve sales, site traffic and calls for five small businesses: Distinguished Young Women, Gulf Coast Exploreum Science Center, Spring Hill Medical Center, USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park and Knotty N Nice.  

Stephanie Bradford, Communications Director for Distinguished Young Women, the largest and oldest national scholarship program for high school girls, commented on how the new mobile-friendly site is helping to raise nationwide recognition, “The stats we have seen further confirm the effectiveness of our new mobile site in reaching and engaging our target audience. With more than 85% of visits to the site from new visitors, we are confident that the mobile site is allowing us to realize greater awareness across the country. As we work to encourage participation in the Distinguished Young Women program, our mobile site is allowing us to connect with our potential participants, teenage girls, in a way they are familiar with and have come to expect from companies and organizations to which they are loyal.”

Kirsten Conley, Director of Marketing and Public Relations for the Gulf Coast Exploreum Science Center, talked about how she’s changing her marketing mix, “We’re able to give our guests and potential guests the information that they’re looking for on the go.  We were stunned by the sheer volume of phone calls that came from the mobile-friendly site and reevaluated our phone system to keep up with the increase in incoming calls.  Lastly, we’ve begun placing more mobile advertisements as part of our marketing mix.”  The mobile-friendly site has brought 40% more calls and 20% more sales and site visits.  

Glenn Geiger of Spring Hill Medical Center, a full-service hospital, had this to say about his GoMo experience, “Once the site was running, the reports from DudaMobile were very eye opening.  The best thing was the tracking of actual phone calls placed to our hospital. Something we have never been able to track was delivered to us instantly, on a silver platter.”  Overall, calls to Spring Hill have increased by 80% since optimizing the site for mobile devices, with visits to the site and hospital increasing by 20%.

Karen Conner, Director of Sales & Marketing for the USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park, encourages other business owners to get started on building their sites if they haven’t already, “We are a military attraction and our potential visitors are most interested in just a few things, mostly admission prices and directions.  The new mobile-friendly site gives us that edge by making our information right at their fingertips.  No more zooming in to find the information and then potentially losing the customer due to their frustration.”  Conner said that sales, calls and site visits have increased by 20% since creating the mobile-friendly site.


Janna Peterson of Knotty N Nice, an informational site about natural styles for African Hair,

said that her mobile site has helped increase site traffic by 200%, “The business is growing and the mobile website would be to thank for that.  It’s easier for people to access my site now and of course we have more traffic now.”  

Each site owner will continue to track their site’s performance by using Google Analytics or DudaMobile’s site analytics reports.   

Success stories like these exemplify how mobile-friendly sites improve sales and traffic for all businesses, no matter the size or industry.  

Let us know your mobile-friendly site success stories in the comments.  Visit howtogomo.com to mobilize your site today!

Posted by: Suzanne Mumford,Google Mobile Ads Marketing and Jessica Sapick, Google Small Business Strategy


Google Mobile Ads Blog

Filed Under: Mobile Tagged With: , , , , ,
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