Did you know that 66% of all emails are first opened on a mobile device? Did you also know that a whopping two-thirds of Americans now own a smartphone and spend 51% of their time online on mobile devices?
As if those stats weren’t convincing enough, here are five reasons why being mobile responsive needs to become a priority.
Google said so.
As marketers, whatever Google suggests, we pretty much need to follow. As Rehan Ijaz writes in Entrepreneur, “Google’s Mobilegeddon update actively penalizes websites that haven’t started to consider mobile marketing. Your site should be responsive and easy to browse on mobile devices.”
That logic carries over to your emails, too. Plus, if your emails contain links to your web content (and they should), you want to provide your readers with an optimal user experience once they get there, and Google understands that. Being mobile responsive is the solution for both.
“To put it simply, Google will slap your website down in the search rankings” if your site is not mobile-friendly, Ijaz adds. “These penalties are becoming stricter over time. If your company hasn’t felt the impact yet, you soon will.”
The majority of searches are being done on mobile.
Speaking of Google, Amit Singhal, senior vice president of search, said Google now sees more than half of its 100 billion monthly searches occurring on mobile devices.
“For the first time, we’re getting more searches on mobile devices than on desktop,” Singhal said.
The more appealing your mobile website is, the better the chance searchers will stick around and subscribe to your mailing list.
Mobile users shop on their devices.
An overwhelming 82% of smartphone users — about 166 million Americans — reported they were going to shop with their device in 2015. That’s expected to rise to 86% by 2018, with 81% at least researching options online before making a purchase.
You can take advantage of that momentum by sending timely emails that lead directly into a mobile-friendly ordering process.
You can create engaging and personalized content.
Unlike desktops, mobile devices can give you the opportunity to experiment with exciting technologies like virtual reality. For example, The New York Times teamed up with Google Cardboard to present subscribers with VR content. After downloading the NYT VR app on their phone, viewers can use a virtual reality headset for a 360-degree video experience.
This allows a marketer to create engaging content that is personalized to your audience, and it can differentiate your brand from the competition, especially if your competitors haven’t begun to embrace this new technology.
You can follow your customers.
Mobile users jump between devices. They may do some email reading and browsing on their mobile device while commuting to work, and later complete the checkout process when they’re on a desktop — or vice versa. It’s important for you to have a responsive site that can be properly viewed on multiple devices and allows you to follow your customer’s journey from device to device.
To make this multi-channel journey easier, create email subject lines that grab the attention of your recipient, and share both your email and marketing campaigns across all your social channels.
Mobile-friendly design tips.
We’ve established the importance behind being mobile responsive, but how exactly can you accomplish that? Here are the best ways to conquer this goal.
- Use responsive design. This is a web development approach where the appearance of an email or website is automatically formatted to the screen size that viewers are currently using to view the content. Google just made that easier.
- Keep your navigation simple, and use a drop-down menu.
- Include a simple-to-use search box on your home page.
- Make it easy to return to the home page by allowing users to go there just by tapping your logo.
- Avoid Flash, Java files, and pop-ups. Besides being distracting, they can slow down your site.
- Keep your sign-up forms short.
- Include large buttons so customers’ fingers can easily click on them within a mobile screen.
- Allow visitors to check out as guests. This speeds up the checkout process and provides anonymity, as they don’t have to enter their contact information.
- Design emails and landing pages so they include a short five-word call to action front and center. This ensures that your customers won’t miss the desired actions you want them to take.
- Keep your content short and to the point.
As mentioned earlier, your visitors are going to bounce back and forth between devices. To make sure you catch them at the right time, focus on creating an omnichannel marketing strategy.
Cydney Goldberg and Molly Bachechi write in Appboy that, “Omnichannel marketing is a strategic and highly coordinated approach to marketing where brands aim to be where their customers are, when they want them to be there, and how they want them to be there.”
How do you build this kind of strategy? “…you have to look at the customer journey from the perspective of the customer,” say Goldberg and Bachechi.
To build this synchronized approach for your customers, here are the steps you’ll need to take:
- Develop user profiles so you know customer preferences and behaviors, and then segment your customers by gathering data on them. This allows you to create personalized messages based on where they are in the sales funnel, demographics, interests, and where they like to hang out online.
- Onboard your customers through multiple channels so they can choose the one they prefer. For example, a welcome email to new customers or subscribers should also link directly to your website or app.
- Follow your customers from device to device. For example, if they place an item in the shopping cart on your app, then that item should be there when they open up your site on their desktop.
- Analyze data so you know where your customers are successfully converting and what channels are underperforming.
How to check for mobile friendliness to improve user experience.
After all of that, you definitely want to make sure your emails and site are seen as mobile-friendly.
One of the easiest ways to do that is see how they look on your phone or tablet. Are all the features properly working? Is it loading quickly?
Knowing what device your users are opening your emails on is an important step to tailoring email designs and content to your recipients. As a reminder, iContact’s templates are mobile responsive, and the built-in preview functionality will show you what your email will look like on a smartphone or tablet. This allows you to spend more time thinking about your content and overall design, thereby maximizing the reach of your message.
It’s always a good idea to ask other people to review your layouts to see if they catch any glitches. Also create A/B tests for your users to see which version of your email or site they prefer. For example, create two versions of an email. In one version, try one CTA, then create another email with an alternate CTA, for instance, a variation of text, or even button color or placement. If your customers are clicking one CTA more often than another, then that’s the email version you should use.
Finally, Google has a useful Mobile-Friendly Test you should take.
How have you made your site mobile responsive?