Channel Dynamics
Digital marketing is one of the most important things for building a brand. It is the key to effectively selling your product or service. However, as mobile usage has grown in virtually every aspect of the internet it has also affected the way that people create, and optimise, content so that they can show it effectively on mobile devices.
Still, many companies are failing to adapt to this changing user behavior. According to research studies that were conducted on the subject, only one-quarter of businesses optimize their website for mobile screens.
A major challenge to mobile content optimization is a lack of mobile screen standards. To those experienced in standard HTML design, this does not come as a surprise. HTML remains a journey back in the past, all to the early days of web development. Layouts must be arranged with tables due to the outdated HTML rendering engines of some web browsers, and CSS must be done inline as many web browsers completely disregard all style declarations made in thesection of the page. But this does not mean that there are not at least some advisable practices for getting your content viewed on mobile devices.
Before planning, writing, designing, or publishing your next webpage update or content, review the following considerations for design, content, and campaign optimization strategies in order to improve user experience regardless of screen size.
Here are 10 things that you can do to improve and optimize your screen for mobile usage:
- Use a smaller number of features
- Use bigger touch targets.
- Offer enhanced scannability
- Get better information uptake by showing a short content summary
- Use relevant photos instead of icons
- Provide room for full story titles without the need for scrolling
- Show the publication date only as a divider
- Add more space between navigation bars
- Always label your drop-down menus
Every mobile screen has room for many user interface features. Even though a website might have a very small number of features, you can easily incorporate these 10 usability improvements.
There are also numerous ways to specifically optimize your site design for mobile usage.
Use generous font sizes as they are usually better for web content. To make sure your message can be easily read, body copy should be set to at least 14 pts and headlines to 22 pts. You should keep in mind that any font smaller than 12 pts will be automatically resized to 12 pts on Apple devices, causing text to potentially wrap differently than you want it to. A single-column responsive layout works best but certain mobile operating systems (notably Android) will not scale web content to fit the screen (they use a standard median width of 480 px), and will therefore display only the left half of a website if it is designed with a two-column layout.
Provide large CTAs in your email content. Your call to action (CTA) is the most important part of a marketing website and it should be eye-catching, well-placed, and above all easily usable. There are many ways and best practices for creating a successful CTA but they all depend on whether they are designed to be selected by a cursor or a finger. Apple’s iOS Human Interface Guidelines recommend a minimum “tappable” target area of 44 × 44 px. That does not mean that all buttons have to be 44 pixels, just that there should not be any buttons or links closer together than 44 pixels. Otherwise there is a risk of a “mistap.” Also, ergonomics are another thing that you should keep in mind when placing CTA buttons within your website. For instance, they should not be located in the lower right corner of the screen because it can be difficult for the user to click on it.
As well as optimizing design it is vital that you make your content suitable for mobile devises.
Keep your headings relevant and clear because headings are one of the most important parts of your content. Keep your heading line short and simple; front-end load it with the most important information that is relevant to the content in a way that produces a compelling reason to read the content below.
Always use clear, concise web content. Think about the environment your website is being viewed in, and the screen size on which it will likely be viewed by the user. Overall mobile screen size is small when it comes to consuming web content on a variety of mobile devices, and users are more likely to be multitasking when they open your page on their mobile device. It is more important now than ever to engage the user as quickly as possible and to limit the amount of copy you include. Make sure that your website content can be easily scannable by using headers, bullet points, and short paragraphs of text whenever possible.
The most important thing is to always track how your users interact with the marketing efforts on your website and to give special attention to mobile usage. The data you have available should guide you in your future marketing and content optimisation efforts. You should aim to make your site suitable for all platforms as well as for all users, something we discussed in our blog post about using customer journey mapping. It is vital that you implement these strategies as it is almost guaranteed that mobile engagement will become more important in the near future.
If you have some techniques you have used to optimise your site or you think these techniques will improve your website and its mobile visibility then let us know by sending us a tweet at @Channel DynamicsLondon.
