How is Your Mobile Content Strategy Looking Lately?

According to Mashable, 17.4% of global web traffic came through mobile devices in 2013, and the rate of mobile use for internet appears to be increasing each year. This means if you haven’t yet thought through a good mobile content strategy for your business, you’d better get started, or you might be missing out on a great opportunity!

Before starting, it’s important to recognise that people generally use mobile devices differently from their desktops. Mobile is also all about speed, and accessing information that is useful and relevant but also concise and easy-to-read. A good mobile strategy involves considering how your audience uses their mobiles or tablets on a day-to-day basis and how you can best accommodate them, as well as considering what you can do to increase your conversion rate.

So what exactly are the differences?

People frequently use their smartphones and tablets while they are on the move, which means the way they use them is naturally going to differ from when they are seated at a desktop. It means that they are going to want quick-loading, smaller bites or ‘snackable bits’ of information due to time constraints and other activities. Information that is too hard to read or links that are difficult to click on are less likely to be favoured by mobile users.

In addition, while search engines are calling for higher quality and longer pieces of content than before, mobile users may not have the time or patience to consume big chunks of content in one go, which means adapting content for mobile use is vital.

Adapting your content for mobile

• Know how your audience is using mobile, know what they want, and be user-centric in all you do. This is a vital starting point! (See more on this below).

• Break up your content. When it comes to mobile devices and sourcing information, headlines appear to work better than stories as you can fit more of them on a small screen while enabling users to click on the link that is of interest to them. Also if you post videos make them short and concise, and ‘click-to-play’ only.

• Avoid screen clutter and gimmicks. A screen showing one or two images and a small amount of clickable text is preferable to one with half a dozen pictures and bits of text scattered all over it. Simplicity and a cleaner screen is the key!

• Still images are preferable. Avoid moving images (unless they are click-to-play) and eliminate popups.

• Speed is vital! Making websites simpler and cleaner helps reduce page load time.

• Create space between elements. This makes it easier for users to click on the link or other element they are interested in, than if they are crammed close together on a small screen.

• Make it easy to sign up or make purchases. Avoid having too many individual screens or steps to go through or complex forms that require the user to fill in lots of fields. And since virtually no one really enjoys having to type a lot of text on mobiles, consider enabling contextual menus and keyboards to make it easier to complete forms. If you make it all too complex you may miss out on conversions.

Knowing what your users want is the key to a good mobile content strategy

The best way to find out what people really want is to ask. Provide a feedback form on your site, or do some surveys to find out how your customers are using mobile devices and what things they like or don’t like about your site. Then, adapt your site to suit your particular business, and to make it easy for your customers to do business with you while on the go.