Cyber Monday 2012 shattered sales records, raking in $1.5 billion in online spending. More telling, perhaps, is that 13 percent of sales came from mobile devices. And more than half of all shoppers browsed on a smartphone or tablet before making a purchase.
Mobile use will only continue to surge, so if your brand hasn’t yet gone portable, it’s time. Here are five talking points we use with our clients to ensure mobile marketing success.
1. Analyze Your Website Traffic
Before you foray into mobile, find out how your customers use it in the buying process. Analyze your website stats and learn how many visitors access your current site from a smartphone or tablet.
If your mobile traffic exceeds 7 percent, it’s time to pull the trigger on mobile marketing. But even if that percentage is low, don’t assume your customer’s aren’t tech savvy, or that you can shelve your mobile presence. That brings us to the next point…
2. Know Your Customers’ Tech Habits
“The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg
If someone doesn’t browse a website on an iPad, that doesn’t mean they aren’t burning up the rest of the web on desktop, or vice versa. Using your website analytics, you can learn your customers’ tech habits.
For example, if they’re more active on desktop during the day, and switch to mobile at lunch and before bed. Or if they’re juggling a smartphone and tablet while they watch TV.
Research from Google found that consumers often use multiple devices simultaneously. And each gadget can trigger an action on the other, which emphasizes the importance of streaming consistent branding and linked calls to action across multiple platforms. Read more about marketing on multiple screens.
3. Integrate Mobile with Your Business Strategy
Now that you understand how your audience uses mobile, it’s time to decide how to integrate it with your overall marketing plan. Within mobile, there are different channels that need to be connected to email marketing, social media, e-commerce and print. SMS (text messages), QR codes, apps, mobile sites – they’re all forms of mobile, but each serves a different purpose in the buying process.
For example, an app can integrate Facebook and Twitter for virality, where users can easily share your brand’s message on social media. And a QR code can direct customers to a mobile landing page to capture leads. Or a mobile e-commerce site can increase sales when many of your customers access your site on the go.
The key to mobile success it making it work with your business objectives, and supporting the rest of your marketing efforts.
4. Create a Mobile Content Plan
The average smartphone display is 4 inches, so a small screen isn’t the place to display 1,000 words of copy, or a white paper on your latest gizmo. Mobile users are distracted. They’re on the go, and they don’t have time for wordy content. So when you create a mobile content marketing plan, keep in mind that copy needs to be bite sized, or your users will bounce.
Usability gurus recommend that on desktop website, no page should be more than three clicks away. On mobile, that’s not the case. In fact, they’ll click more, as long as the process is logical and brief.
For example, here’s how this story might appear on mobile.
Click around our interactive mobile demo.
You get the point. Keep it short and snappy, with clear calls to action for the reader to quickly get to the information. See more examples of Ideopia’s mobile website and app design on our portfolio.
5. Weave Mobile into Your Content Management System
Manually updating your mobile and desktop sites separately is time consuming and expensive. A handful of mobile workflows and frameworks modify and automate content from desktop to mobile, with some assembly required. To avoid any headaches, check with your web team or agency to decide on a system to put in place before you take your brand mobile. And whatever you do, don’t attempt to port your desktop site to mobile. It won’t work.
“Google mobile user experience requires a different design than what’s needed to satisfy desktop users,” writes usability master Jakob Nielsen.
With a solid plan, making the transition to mobile can be seamless and rewarding. Try some of these tips, and you’ll save time and money, and prevent any future migraines. Or if you don’t want to tackle it on your own, give us a call. Learn more about Ideopia’s mobile marketing capabilities.
Special thanks to Curt Staubach, Ideopia’s director of interactive and web development, for his insight on this story, and creating the super-awesome mobile demo.