According to a recent study sponsored by Google, mobile users want speed and simplicity when browsing on their smartphones, and they’re quick to abandon businesses that don’t provide an enjoyable mobile experience.
The key statistic, in our opinion, was this: 61% of people said that if they don’t find what they want “right away,” they’ll move on to another site. This means that your business’s mobile site, if poorly designed, can become your competitor’s advantage. A well-designed mobile site, on the other hand, is something that 67% of respondents said would make them more likely to buy from the business that published the website.
The good news is that what mobile users want is easy to provide: simplicity. They want large buttons, minimal content, easy-to-find search bars, a reduced need to scroll or adjust screen size, forms with only a few fields, and similar features. They also generally want basic information such as your phone number, location, email address, and basic products right up front, as well as a link to your main site.
While a majority would like to see the above-described features, less than half want to wind up at your social site or see video content, so avoid these unless there is a compelling reason to include them.
The costs of not optimizing your mobile site to create a simple and speedy experience are the following: a) 52% of respondents said they would be less likely to use a business if they have a bad mobile experience, and b) 48% think a bad mobile experience means that a business doesn’t care about them.
The bottom line is this: it isn’t expensive or complex to develop a user-friendly mobile site, but it can be quite costly to neglect the project. The sooner your business has an optimized mobile website, the sooner you start gaining business from mobile users instead of losing it.
Andrew Gazdecki is the founder and CEO of Bizness Apps, a do-it-yourself mobile app & mobile website platform for small businesses and Bizness CRM, a CRM designed to make selling to small businesses easy.