Ok, so The Year of Mobile has now passed. (I have no real idea when it actually was, as every year from about 2008 onwards was touted as ‘The Year’). I just know that it has definitely passed and we are now in a mobile dominated world. Google recently slipped into a press event that the ‘vast majority’ of searches are on a mobile. Brightedge (the global leader in enterprise SEO and content performance) also reported in a recent study that 57% of their client’s traffic is coming from a combination of mobile and tablets. In this blog, we’ll share our own findings surrounding mobile conversions as well as sharing our top tips to help you optimise your conversion paths for different devices!

 

Our Findings

Our own client-base is currently showing the following splits:

Clicks by device split pie chart

 

63% of impressions and 64% of clicks between mobile and tablets is a clear majority. Interestingly though, conversions are still weighted towards desktop; this would indicate there is still work to do in terms of user experience on mobiles – especially conversion rate optimisation. Where we do have clients who are keen to improve the conversion path on their mobile landing pages, we see conversion rates largely in line across devices.

Help From The AdWords Interface

Google had made the importance of mobile specific design pretty clear, (such as with accelerated mobile pages or penalising ‘unfriendly’ mobile pages in the rankings.) However, if people hadn’t got this message then the recent addition to the new AdWords interface should make it obvious. A landing page checker (see image below) that reports on the mobile friendliness of each landing page in use. Even on fully responsive sites, we are seeing huge variances in scores between landing pages.

Landing Page examples

Consider Your Mobile Conversion Path

We recently picked up a client who was launching a new business and were looking to dip their toe into the murky waters of PPC. When we did the keyword research, Google were suggesting 77% of their traffic would be mobile! When looking at the proposed (nearly finished) site, it was labelled up to be responsive and performance on mobile as ‘fine’. What they hadn’t done was consider the conversion path, or site design, with mobile first and foremost. They had designed a desktop site, and adjusted it for mobile. Essentially they had designed a site for less than 20% of the traffic, and adjusted it for over 80%!

Many think that simply having a responsive mobile version of a site is enough. I believe that this thought is restricting mobile conversion rates much more than any lack of intent from mobile users themselves.

It is fairly well known that nearly one third of smartphone users will immediately switch to another website if yours doesn’t satisfy their needs.1 More interesting though, is the fact that 64% switch because there are too many steps or they can’t find the information they’re looking for.2

This shows that the intent to convert is there, but the process stops the user – no matter how big and clickable the buttons are!

The Takeaway

There is nothing really different about conversion rate optimisation for mobiles, just everything is magnified.

  • Forms as conversions – every box is more of a pain on mobile. Only ask for what is vital.
  • Delivery Address – Does the box default to where the bulk of your customers are eg: UK / USA? Having to scroll though dozens of countries to find yours is even more annoying on a small screen. Use postcode boxes to auto complete the bulk of information.
  • Want calls? – make sure the number is at the top of every page, not just your contact page.
  • Checkout – do you really need them to create an account before paying?
  • No avoiding a complicated sign up process? – can you gather just an email address and send the full form for completion on another device?

 

The message is, don’t mistake being mobile friendly with being mobile conversion friendly. As someone famous once said (probably) ‘Big buttons doth not a conversion maketh’.

 

For more help on how to optimise your paid search, why don’t you check out part one of our ‘Top Ways To Lose Money With AdWords‘ series?

 

 

 

 

1-2. Google / Ipsos Connect, Rising Consumer Expectations in the Micro-Moment, U.S., Dec. 2016 n=1,516 US online smartphone users, A18+