Mobile Optimisation – What does it all mean?

Let’s take this scenario…

You are standing in a line at the ATM. There are five people ahead of you, and one person at the machine – who’s been poring over the ‘money-spitter’ for the last 6 minutes.

In such moments, though you’ve always promised yourself to take deep breaths and quietly practice your skills on empathy and gratitude – the frustration and impatience at hand gets the better of you…

You reach into your pockets and quickly whip out your smart phone to find the much needed solace. Within seconds, you’re happily surfing the internet while you wait in the line.

On your smartphone screen a popup on ‘Pashmina sweaters’ catches your fancy, and you click the link to find more…

You find the text to be so small that you have to pinch the screen with your fingers; zoom in and out, just to read a single sentence of the content.

You want to subscribe to their newsletter, but typing your email address into the box (only half visible), is quite an arduous task.

The full image of the orange-colored sweater that you so wanted to check out, is taking ages to load onto your phone screen…

Now the frustration of browsing that website outweighs the frustration of standing behind a ‘dead-still’ line at the ATM. You slip your phone back into your pocket - and this time take a long deep breath … for real!

I’m sure we’ve all been in such a situation. The context however can vary, but this is a typical example of having a ‘bad experience’ in browsing websites, which are not optimised for mobile experience.

What is Mobile Optimisation?

The people at Moz.com say, “Mobile optimisation is the process of ensuring that visitors who access your site from mobile devices have an experience optimised for the device.”

In other words, It is making sure that your visitors receive a ‘flawless’ navigation within your website and landing pages and a satisfying ‘user experience’ regardless of the mobile device they’re holding, or the context they’re in.

Mobile optimisation looks into website design, site structure, page speed, mobile copy and ‘intent’ including other behavioural traits of the mobile users.

Here are few attributes of a well-executed ‘mobile optimised’ site:

1. Faster Loading Speed = Engagement=Conversion.

It is estimated that 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less and 40% abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. (Source: Kissmetrics). Given this stats it seems fair to say that - speed matters when it comes to loading pages; or you risk losing your visitors, hence decrease the chances of conversions.

Compared to Desktop users, mobile users are a different breed - they are always on the lookout for quick and easy, bite-size information, so that decisions can be made on the fly. Shorter loading time engages the users before they lose their patience – and increases conversion probabilities.

Few tweaks to speed up your web page loading time:

1. Get rid of the Redirects: Though URL Redirects are a common desktop practice; it stifles the web pages for mobile platforms by generating huge latency issues. For desktop browsers, redirects happen in a flash and are practically unnoticeable, but for a mobile site the transition could take up to 9 long seconds, before the user can see anything on the screen. The good news however is that, eliminating two redirects can slice off 3 seconds in the uploading time.
2. Downsize your images: It is perfectly fine to have lower-resolution images for mobile sites, as the user is looking at smaller screen sizes. Rich, high-resolution images will unnecessarily increase the page size. Make sure that you use appropriate image type. Heavy coloured pics are better off as JPEG files whereas flat graphics should be in PNG8 file type. Useful tools for image compression like ImageOptim and TinyPNG can help to downsize your files without compromising on the image quality.
3. Use HTML in place of Image buttons: It is a good practice to place an HTML embedded text link - which works perfectly fine in most cases – rather than making a round trip through the network to download an image button. Similarly other page components such as CSS and JavaScript can also be embedded into the HTML to reduce trips to the network and slash loading time.

Let us also not forget that Google has prioritised its algorithms to take web page download speed as one of the indicators for page rankings.  

2. Reformatted Elements

A mobile optimised site is reformatted to suit the mobile users. The elements within the web pages are designed in such a manner that users avoid any sort of friction while navigating through the site.  A few examples:

1. Minimalist, uncluttered design with single column layout, showing fewer but pertinent features.
2. ‘Thumb friendly’, intuitive and simplified navigation which adheres to visual hierarchy.
3. Large buttons with white borders to accommodate those with big or clumsy fingers.
4. Designed to limit or completely avoid any typing by the users.
5. Clearly marked search and filter functions to guide users’ preferences – rather than putting up long lists of options.

3. Copywriting or Mobile Copy

Yes, just like other design aspects, mobile copywriting also plays a crucial role in ‘mobile optimisation’. Here are a few insights into creating content for the mobile users:

1. Various eye tracking studies have revealed that mobile users favour images over text.Reduction of irrelevant images is a must, as they fill up valuable screen real-estate; tend to clutter the screen space and distract users from engaging texts.
2. Avoid the use of unnecessary words and sentences. Short and succinct writing is crucial in creating mobile content – the goal is to stay within the on-screen width, and deliver compelling messages without the users requiring to swipe, scroll or tap, to read a longer sentence.
3. Craft short, powerful headlines. Short impactful headlines attract more attention; longer ones tend to hide beneath the fold.
4. Similarly your opening sentences of an article or any segment below the title shouldgrab the users’ attention immediately! Small mobile-screen-size only allows for a couple of sentence to be visible. This should work as a ‘hook’ for the readers to dive deeper into your copy.
5. The paragraphs should be spread out as short bite-size chunks. Long paras bore the readers while shorter ones are more rhythmic and palatable. 

Since the release of the ‘Mobilegeddon’, Google’s Algorithm update on April 21, 2015; mobile-friendly and mobile-optimized sites have been rewarded with better search engine rankings and those not up to the mark, are being penalised.

Whether we like it or not, mobile users and ‘mobile browsing’ is growing at a break-neck speed. Similar is the demand of the users to seek immediate gratification for their informational hunger. It is now a necessity that we move into the future with ‘mobile’ in our minds!