In mobile site design it’s extremely important to focus on the user and what’s going on inside his mind. We have to get out of that age-old corporate speak mindset where we present our companies in these grandiose terms. Anyone can sound good on paper. That’s what we have a tendency to do as business owners. We try and present ourselves as bigger-than-life.
In all things online this doesn’t work. The Gen Y folks are too critical for starters. They are jaded. They know we are full of crap. They appreciate honesty with all our warts intact.
Secondly, folks today are more interested in themselves than they are in you. If we don’t get this as business owners and marketers we will fail ultimately. People want to know what’s in it for them, what they can get out of it. They want the answers to their most pressing questions. They don’t have time to hear all your hoopla about how you’ve been helping promote businesses for more than a quarter of a century and were in Junior Achievement back in high school.
Because of the time factor:
- They want you to get to the point.
- They want you to get to the point they are personally, truly interested in.
- They want you to present that point in such a way that they don’t have to think.
- They want it easy to respond.
If you will gear your mobile site design towards these goals you will find that your site actually meets the needs of your readers.
Every aspect of our marketing has to be geared toward the user’s experience. Don’t waste your time. Keep this in mind when doing your mobile web development, and it will be time well spent.
Take the time to ask yourself what scenarios in which your customers might be looking for your site. If you are a towing company, realize they are most likely to call you while broken down on the side of the road. Incorporate those feelings and needs into your mobile web designs.
Nail salon owners: when might mobile users be looking for your site? Perhaps in a situation where they need a quick fix because they are supposed to be at a meeting speaking or presenting, or at a wedding, or some other pressing situation where a broken nail feels catastrophic. Take the time to develop your mobile site designs with them in mind. Don’t leave the user out of the equation.
In fact, even for those who consider a mobile site a necessary part of their business, and have invested the time and money to develop one, have forgotten that others aspects of their marketing should be geared towards mobile as well. In fact, we should adopt the stated modus operandi of Google.
They declared 2 years ago that all their future endeavors, all of them, would be created, designed, geared towards mobile first. Everything. Google is going mobile, and has been going mobile for two years. If you haven’t been heading that way, you’d better get going.
They own Android. Google owns Android. Does that give you an idea as to how far they are taking this? All those apps. All those ads. They are completely embracing this technology. And by the way, so are all your customers. If you aren’t mobile yet, and I don’t just mean with a mobile site, you are behind.
When incorporating mobile site design into your business, what you need to see is all your other efforts need to be mobile designs. Recognize that if you are sending out emails, for example, and trying to get them to click a link to be taken to a landing page that your customers are most likely or at least highly likely, to be viewing that email on a cell phone… and then clicking the link from that cell phone.
Are your landing pages and emails using mobile site designs? Are they optimized for mobile? What about your social marketing? Are you driving them to offers, etc. that are made with the mobile user in mind?
It’s not just a matter of adding mobile to your site, but beginning to make the shift from web to mobile in a large portion of your marketing efforts.
Facebook was really the first real shift for marketers. We had to come to understand that Facebook users didn’t really want to be taken off of Facebook. They didn’t want to hear, “Buy my stuff.” Over and over again. Instead we had to shift to market specifically to Facebook users. It’s the same with Twitter.
As we got that, we were more successful in our marketing efforts. It’s the same with mobile users. We have to consider mobile site design now, in all we do. They are certainly only a portion of our users, but they are a huge portion, a larger portion than we tend to realize, and a quickly growing portion of our users. They will soon be, if they are not already, the largest portion of our users.
This is especially true for local businesses. This is their goldmine. If they would get this they would open up their business to tons more business, just by adding a mobile site. Then they need to begin revamping all their marketing efforts to include mobile site design in all they do.
These users who search for local businesses want to buy now! Make it easy for them to do that. And the competition is way low because local businesses are slow to get this and adopt it. For those businesses that get on board quickly, they can see huge rewards in the immediate future for some time to come.
If you are interested in learning more about mobile site design be sure and grab a copy of our FREE Going Mobile Report that will tell you all about how you can do it yourself, get mobile templates, learn more about mobile marketing or have it all done for you.