Case for Mobile Sites
According to Gartner, more people will use their mobile phones than PCs to get online by 2013. Additionally, mobile searches have quadrupled since 2010, making a mobile-optimized landing page – a mobile site – more important than ever before.
Compuware, which owns the Gomez brand, says that users expect their mobile experience to be as good as their desktop experience, further driving the claim that mobile-optimized sites are a must.
Sixty percent of users expect a mobile site to load in three seconds or less, while 71 percent expect the mobile site to load as fast as a PC site, Compuware found in a recent study. And 78 percent will retry a site two times or less if it does not load initially.
A bad mobile experience can cost a business its customers, the Compuware study found. In fact, 57 percent of consumers would not recommend a business without a mobile site, 40 percent have turned to a competitor’s site after a bad mobile experience and 25 percent of adults have cursed at their phone when a site does not work.
According to Google, customers are using the mobile Web to connect with local businesses.
A whopping 95 percent of smartphone users have searched for local information, claims Google. Sixty-one percent of consumers call a business after searching for it and 59 percent visit the location.
Additionally, 90 percent of people act within 24-hours.
Google says that apps are fun and useful but many consumers prefer mobile sites for shopping.
In fact, according to Adobe, 81 percent of people prefer a mobile site over apps for researching prices, 79 percent prefer a mobile site for product reviews and 63 percent prefer to purchase via a mobile site.
Best practice
Mobile Web best practices are listed by Google:
1. Keep it quick
2. Simplify navigation
3. Be thumb-friendly
4. Design for visibility
5. Make it accessible
6. Make it easy to convert
7. Make it local
8. Make it seamless
9. Use mobile site redirects
10. Learn, listen and iterate
“All businesses, big and small, need to understand how to reach their customers on the mobile Web,” said Jason Spero, director of mobile for Americas at Google, Mountain View, CA.
source: http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/strategy/11385.html
Tags: mobile - mobile site - mobile site optimization - smartphone