If you missed last week’s blog post, we walked through simple ways of determining if your business needs a mobile website. This week we will be looking at forming a mobile website strategy for your business, including shortfalls to avoid.
As a marketing agency, we subscribe to the K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid) strategy for both our Graphic Design style and Website Design services. We’ve found the less distractions the customer has, the easier it is for them understand your message and ultimately purchase your products/services. In the case of a mobile website, there couldn’t be a better application for this strategy – since the intent of a mobile website is to condense the important aspects of your website’s content into a format that is user-friendly on a smaller screen.
What Information is Your Customer Seeking?
This first step to forming your mobile strategy is identifying what information is your customer seeking when accessing your website via a mobile device. It’s important to keep in mind, this information may be very different than your full website.
In the majority of brick and mortar businesses, the top two answers are usually going to be 1) how to find your location and 2) how to contact your location. The days of customers calling 411 to be connected to your business are slowly fading away. Most customers will simply type in your business’s name into their mobile phones browser and search for you. In other businesses, your location may not be important – instead, maybe your customers are looking for coupons, free trials or product information. This will vary from business to business.
What we find is when customers can’t easily find the information they’re looking for, they not only become frustrated, you have the potential of losing them as a customer.
A few weeks ago I purchased a Recaro Converitble Carseat for my 1 year old son. For anyone that has ever installed a carseat you can see where this story is going. After attending a baby bootcamp class at our hospital, I learned that 91% of carseats are installed improperly. Shocking, right? Realizing the importance of correct installation, I read the manual very carefully. Since I was now a (so-called) expert, I walked down the street to install the new carseat. Once I got the seat in the car, I quickly discovered the poorly printed manual’s photos (who still prints black and white photos?) were quite hard to follow. I searched Recaro from my mobile phone figuring I could find clearer installation instructions on their website.
Here is what we found:
After zooming and scrolling I found the seat I purchased. I was extremely disappointed that I couldn’t find any information on installing the carseat. At a minimum, I thought there would be a digital copy of the installation instructions and maybe even a how-to video. I walked back to my home and did another search until I found a YouTube video that a mother put together explaining how to install the seat. About 30 minutes later, I returned to my vehicle to install the seat. By the end of this ordeal I was exhausted, something that should have taken 10 minutes ended up taking over an hour. In this example it’s very obvious Recaro doesn’t have a mobile site (error number one), but more importantly the content I was seeking I couldn’t find.
I thought it was important to describe a situation where a brand having a mobile site for their products really makes sense. Especially when you consider importance of installing the seat correctly. In today’s day and age, customer’s expect to find the information that they need about your business’s products and services.
K.I.S.S – But Not Too Simple:
We’ve discussed the importance of keeping your mobile site simple, but don’t make your mobile website so simple you lose opportunities to add-value to your customers experience and connect with your customers. Below you will find an example of two popular National haircut chains, Fantastic Sams and Supercuts.
As you can see, Fantastic Sams really missed the purpose of a mobile website. The only thing you’re able to do on their mobile website is to find a location. In contrast, Supercuts’ mobile site automatically provides you the nearest locations, a gallery of haircut styles (to show your stylist), sign-up/download special offers and a contact us form. Supercuts did a great job of sorting through all of the pages of their full website, to find the few pages that are must have pages/information for their customer accessing their site from their mobile device. Of course the Supercuts’ mobile website isn’t perfect (see the missing Title Tag), it is a great example of two competing businesses with two completely different approaches to a mobile website.
What’s Next:
Now that you’ve decided your business needs a mobile website and you’ve identified the core objectives of your mobile website, it’s time to get it built.
If you’re looking for a creative marketing agency, that has experience with mobile websites, please contact us to receive a custom quote. We would love speak to learn more about your business and how we can help you succeed.
