A stunning 94 percent of people in the U.S. use a mobile device, with 53 percent of those people using smartphones. Of those, 86 percent of people sent texts, 82 percent browse the web, 75 percent check email, and 63 percent use social networking apps. That’s amazing. But, you want to know what’s more amazing? People shop on their mobile devices (yes those tiny, tiny screens) all the time. This is why you need to get cracking on making your site mobile friendly. Here’s how.
Build Responsive Websites
Because mobile devices are smaller than their laptop counterparts, they don’t enjoy the same amount of space and screen real estate. Some leading web developers, like SkyGate Media, suggest that web design should be responsive.
A responsive design means that your website automatically adjusts to the screen size of the user’s device. Remember mobile-based themes? These were purpose-built website designs that were specifically used for mobile devices. Often, they contained different content than the full site. Many companies spent thousands of dollars on them, only to realize (too late) that responsive design was right around the corner.
Responsive design is the new standard now, and it allows you to design one website that will cater to all users, regardless of what device they’re using.
Short Vs Long-Form Content
There’s an epic debate on short-form vs long-form content. Which one is best? The proponents of mobile marketing almost always suggest that you publish short-form content. Why? Because a few studies show higher bounce rates among mobile users.
Specifically, mobile bounce rates are 9.56 percent higher than desktop bounces. But, why are these people really bouncing? Is it because they don’t have long attention spans? Possibly. It might also be because page load times have increased thanks to websites being designed primarily for desktops and laptops.
By refocusing your website’s design, you can capture mobile users’ attention. Get those page load times down, and you’ll probably see a difference in bounce rates. Users are getting wise to the practice of companies purchasing 400 word fluff content from content mills.
You need to dig deep, do original research, and publish long-form content.
Publishing More Vs Marketing More
The old mantra was “fresh content.” The new one is “market your content assets.” Instead of focusing on pushing out more content every day or week, spend more time marketing your existing content. Remember, your job is to get your content in front of mobile users so that they’ll ultimately do something with it.
“Consuming content” is really a dead-end strategy. What happens after they consume it? They move on. You don’t want that. You want them to interact with your content, come back and play with it some more, share it, re-read it, bookmark it, share it some more, sign up to your email list, and eventually buy something from you. This is the true meaning of a “content asset.”
Write Evergreen Content
One of the ways you can make your content “stick” is to create evergreen content. The problem with this approach is that there’s already a lot of that out there. So, for example, if you own a bicycle shop, one idea might be to create content on “how to ride a bike.”
Now, you can imagine all of the eye-rolls you’ll get for suggesting this to your marketing people. And, if you write a short piece, yes it’s going to bomb. It will be unoriginal, vapid, and forgettable.
But, if you create an epic 3,000 word post, complete with diagrams, photos, body mechanics involved in riding, ideas for creating efficient strokes, reducing wind resistance, advanced cycling techniques, calculations and test results on how you improved your peddling efficiency and speed, how to select clothing (reviews on popular clothing items), simple repairs, tools used to repair bikes, and non-obvious storage ideas that prolong the life of the bicycle, then you’ll have created something that no one else has done before.
It will be “the definitive guide to riding a bike,” which sounds crazy, but will be strangely comprehensive and satisfying to the right audience. That’s the type of content that gets shared, but it’s also the type of content that takes 20+ hours to create, so almost none of your competition will bother to do it.
Most people today are focusing on creating short content. Here’s your chance to create something that’s epic, and that looks great on mobile devices.
