Discovering and optimising mobile opportunities

Joseph Griffiths – Digital Account Manager

Apologies

≠

Mobile Search

baynote.com/infographic/mcommerce-takes-off/

http://www.google.com/think/research-studies/mobile-path-to-purchase-5-key-findings.html

Mobile is Growing £1m/month from a mobile site

How does mobile search work?

How does Google index & rank mobile sites? When you search Google using a mobile phone you are searching the exact same index as you would on a desktop

Usually Google sends mobile visitors directly to the mobile version so they don’t need to be redirected

Mobile user experience & other factors will determine the rankings of the domain to mobile searchers independently from desktop searchers

Currently there isn’t a huge difference in the search results, but there will be in future.

http://searchengineland.com/the-definitive-guide-to-mobile-technical-seo-166066

Opportunity Analysis

Always start with analytics Analyse your desktop visitors against your mobile visitors

How are you being affected by not optimising your mobile experience?

What are the glaring differences between user experiences?

Engagement metric disparities

6.33% higher bounce rate

1.46 fewer pages per visit

1.48 seconds lower average visit duration

Results in a loss of trust and, ultimately, REVENUE

Do efforts need to be focused? What are the biggest problem areas?

Delve into content metrics in analytics.

Which pages are seeing the highest

bounce rate?

This example shows a booking process

30% higher bounce rate

Content opportunities Having your buying guides available on mobile is very important

Webmaster Tools What are your current mobile queries?

Do you have physical locations? Are you optimised for local SEO?

Local optimisation is critical to mobile performance if you have physical premises

Do you have a Google+ business profile?

Store locators are very important

Store finders

Optimising Your Mobile Offering

You have 3 options…

Fully responsive Dynamically served HTML & CSS

Mobile version

It will massively effect your performance

+100% MOBILE

CONVERSION

+20% CLICK

THROUGH RATE

+51% MOBILE

CONVERSION

+28% TRAFFIC

INCREASE

http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/63185-14-brands-that-increased-conversion-rates-via-responsive-design

Responsive design Responsive design is a flexible design that automatically resizes itself depending on the size of the device being used.

One site for every screen.

This is Google's recommended configuration.

Responsive pros and cons Pros

Once implemented, compatible with all current and future devices – no maintenance costs

No duplication issues

Google friendly as it saves them crawling your site multiple times

Cons

Expensive to implement as it may require a site redesign

User Experience is limited to design

Dynamically served HTML & CSS This approach serves different CSS mark-up or content to a user depending on their device

A user detect agent will determine which code to be shown

A huge benefit of this is that you can tailor not just design, but content, depending on the device

In essence, there is multiple HTML/CSS mark-up on each page that shows to different users based on their device

Dynamic pros and cons Pros

Content can be differentiated as well as design

Customisation of the user journey

No duplication issues

Cons

Costly to maintain as new pages need to be coded multiple times

Technically the most complex of the three options, leaving you more open to doing something wrong

Mobile version (separate URL’s) Using this approach, each desktop URL has an equivalent mobile optimised URL

This is usually done in the following way:

www.example.com

m.example.com

When a user lands on the desktop version from a mobile device, the website detects this and redirects them to the appropriate page on the m.example.com site

Mobile version pros and cons Pros

Easier and cheaper to implement

Content can be differentiated as well as design

Customisation of the user journey

Cons

Potential duplication issues

Indexing is more complex so content will take longer to be indexed

Risk of penalisation if redirects aren’t properly implemented

Which to choose Just because Google like responsive design doesn’t mean that this is the best option for your business

In a lot of cases it is, but you should focus on your customers, what experience are they demanding?

Does a mobile users journey differ from a desktop users journey? This all needs to be researched before making a decision on this

How? There are easy ways to go mobile

Each require very specific and different methods of technical implementation. Getting it wrong could put you in the

firing line for all sorts of issues.

Google have issued clear recommendations on what it expects to see from mobile optimised websites

https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details

Redirects Redirects are a necessary evil with mobile sites, but it is astounding how many people get this wrong

Under no circumstances should you blanket redirect mobile users to your homepage – you will lose trust and Google will penalise your mobile site

Have a comprehensive 301 redirect map in place before the mobile version goes live

Site speed Remember that mobile users are often visiting to your site through a 3G connection

If your site has a slow load time then it increases the chances of that user returning to search

Use Googles PageSpeed Insights tool to identify and fix issues

http://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

Mobile web crawler If you have a mobile site then Google needs to be able to crawl this and see that it exists

In order to do this, Google has a specific crawler for mobile devices

This needs to be allowed to crawl the site in your robots.txt

If you do not allow this, or inadvertantly block it, Google will not know your mobile site exists

Source: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/googlebot-mobile

Mobile only errors Do not redirect mobile users to a mobile page that does not exist, in this instance just send them to the desktop site

iPhones and some Android devices can’t play flash, try to avoid using this on any mobile optimised pages – Google track this signal and actively do not show results that contain flash to mobile users

Analytics monitoring Once a mobile offering has been implemented, user engagement through mobile needs to be tracked

How has the implementation affected engagement?

Are users dropping off anywhere on their user journey?

Always be improving your experience

How can you use design to improve your SEO?

How long do you have to engage a user?

3.8 seconds Jacob Nielson – useit.com

Your design 3.8 seconds to establish…

Relevance • Are you right for me? • Have you answered my

question?

Trust • Do you look credible? • Can I trust you with my

money?

Or else…

The user returned to search. You did not satisfy their objectives.

Return to Search You have a few seconds to get the visitors attention and persuade them that they have arrived at a site that will answer their query

If they go back to Google that’s a negative signal

Google – Present and Future

The current landscape Google will penalise mobile results if you do not give the user a good experience

Currently this is limited to faulty redirects and smartphone only errors

Source: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/changes-in-rankings-of-smartphone_11.html

Google expects “The goal of many of our ranking changes is to help searchers find sites that provide a great user experience and fulfil their information needs.”

Matt Cutts

If you deliver a great user experience through desktop, Google expects parity with mobile and desktop experiences

If you do not deliver this, Google may penalise the site in mobile search results

Tomorrows Landscape A very different set of SERP’s for mobile and desktop dependent on mobile experience

Site speed will become a ranking factor for mobile SERP’s – keep on top of this

UX, UX, UX

Apps being indexing in Google and appearing in mobile searches (Google KitKat) - "view in app" buttons in search results.

Joseph.Griffiths@branded3.com

@B3Joseph

http://uk.movember.com/mospace/1620708

Thank You