For the longest time whenever the term “website” was mentioned most people would draw up the image of a website being displayed on a computer monitor. Lately the internet has been under a state of transformation as a rapidly growing percentage of internet users have firmly embraced mobile devices.
- Smart Phones
- Tablets
- NetBooks
The devices mentioned above encompass the many things that we’ve come to know as iPods, iPads, and laptop computers with smaller screens than your average computer monitor. A common consensus in the internet industry is that:
“By the end of this year 50% of mobile phones will be smart phones.”
That’s right! Across industries (some more than others) by the end of this year we can expect half of our target audience to be in possession of a smart phone capable of searching whenever the need strikes them. In case the consensus above didn’t move you at all, how about this…
The Motivation Behind Internet Searches
When an individual decides to go to the internet for something they exhibit some degree of a want or a need. Take keywords for instance, some phrases mean more to a business than others if you consider the differences in motivation between “mold removal” and “emergency mold removal” or “saint paul mold removal.”
From the point of view of a company that provides mold removal services would obviously love to rank first for the generic term “mold removal.” The trade off is that there’s more competition for that term and the motivation is less defined. They could be do-it-yourselfers looking how to take care of their mold or their perhaps they’re just browsing.
On the other hand, “emergency mold removal” and “Saint Paul mold removal” indicate a more refined motivation that these searchers aren’t looking for information, they’re looking for a service!
While this example is debatable the idea is that certain searches express a motivation to convert into business more than others. For most businesses a website is an investment in marketing, not an art piece.
Let’s take this idea of internet searching motivation offline for a moment…
QR Codes Rock!
If you’re a locally based business, or one that utilizes business cards, packaging, or print advertising you have the opportunity to enhance conversion. However, in order to really get the most out of your conversion you need the follow up in place, let me offer an example:
After attending an event at the X-Cel Center we were walking through the skyways wondering where we should stop for dinner. Poster ads lined the terminals encouraging us to stop in because they had a nice ad, but with just a phone number and sometimes a web address that led to a site that wasn’t very iPhone friendly, we ended up walking past quite a bit of ads still wandering.
We finally came across a poster with a QR code that led us straight to a site that was properly formatted for a mobile device. After looking through the menu and spotting there was a happy hour we went there and closed the place and ran into people we saw at the show!
Three things came together the directly resulted in the success of that restaurant making patrons of us and others from the show.
- Ads were placed in a spot that fit the motivations of the foot traffic;
- The ad had a QR code that gave us an effortless way of getting the low-down;
- The site we were directed to is properly designed for mobile devices to make it easy for us to see what they had to offer.
There is a specific motivation that accompanies a mobile device, one of those is that if the phone is mobile, the person using that device uses it on the go.
On Screen Real Estate
The truth is that you have a limited amount of space on a smaller screen, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you consider that some of your pages are simply more appropriate for a mobile visitor than someone at home on a large screen.
Let’s say you were invited last minute to go to a music festival and you were away from your computer. You then deftly decide to pull it up on your mobile phone, what would you want to see to make a decision?
Since the mobile screen is smaller we’re forced to really consider what pages are most important to the website as a whole. In your case as somebody who is short on time to make a last minute decision you want to see:
- Home – What the festival is;
- Line Up – Who’s playing and when;
- Location – Where and how to get there;
- Misc. – Other acts, events, attractions;
- Tickets – How much and if they’re still available;
In the bind that you’re in and during the course of your time at the festival you’ll ultimately end up relying on the links above that would make the cut for the mobile version. While including history, photos, videos, and merchandise links to the main menu may have been neat to browse through, you can browse plenty at home on a bigger screen.
From the point of view of our imaginary music festival they would be able to convert more ticket goers by making it clear to them directly what was involved.
If a visitor can’t find what their looking for they’ll simply leave your page and go elsewhere, so the limited screen real estate on a mobile device can really benefit a motivated audience that just wants to cut to the chase. In the end, a better result is enjoyed by promoters trying to convert ticket sales and a festival attendee who bought their ticket and has a direct line to all the festivities!
The Ultimate Goal: Strike When the Iron is Hot
Making the choice to take your site mobile is a great investment in ensuring that your site is performing on all fronts. We started by talking about motivations because that is really the cornerstone of why mobile web design is important.
Once we accepted that searches and internet usage is driven by needs and wants we directed our attention to QR codes which is such a phenomenal tool for print, but also segues into the idea of striking while the iron is hot. The difference here with QR is that you can pretty much assume they’re coming to your site from a mobile device so the next step is to get used to thinking how a mobile user is motivated in different scenarios.
Finally, we ended with the last minute scenario of the music festival to understand that page real estate counts and that there are simply some pages that are better than others, especially when they’re on a mobile device.
In my opinion the QR code example I find an ideal conversion because our motivation literally met no resistance at all when we found that poster, scanned the code, and quickly found out what we needed so we could go be customers of theirs.
I don’t think this is an exclusive series of events at all as we all have sales funnels in our own ways that play to motivations, understanding how you can lace them together will make for far better results and mobile web design is right there to close the deal the right way!