3 Trends That Will Help You Boost Mobile User Experience

Successful online marketers are always on their toes. They constantly adapt to new trends and technology to have an edge over their competition.

Do you think you have what it takes to join their ranks? Then you should always think and act fast.

For example, remember when Google announced that more searches now occur on mobile devices than on computers? That was two years ago. And yet, a lot of website owners and bloggers still don’t have a mobile marketing strategy in place.

By now, it’s clear that mobile is the future of digital marketing. With technologies like VR and live video streaming, users are growing more concerned over mobile experience. In fact, 57 percent of them will refuse to recommend a business if it has a subpar mobile site.

Boosting Your Site’s Mobile User Experience

Don’t worry — you can still catch up by taking advantage of the latest trends in the mobile space. You can start with the following:

Creating Mobile-Friendly Emails

Email marketing has been one of the cornerstones of digital marketing ever since the beginning. This time, evidence suggests that you should start optimizing emails for mobile users.

According to statistics, people now read emails longer on smartphones. It’s also predicted that, by 2018, 80 percent of users will use email services exclusively through a mobile device.

For starters, implementing a responsive email design is a great way to boost the mobile experience of your subscribers. Considering that platforms like Pagemodo, iContact or MailChimp already offer a number of responsive templates for emails. Then it should be easy to check this off your list.

Just remember to optimize every single detail for mobile screens. Buttons, for example, must be large and easy to tap. The content must also be presented in a long-scrolling format, which allows mobile users to simply swipe up to read the entire email.

Below are some additional tips on how to create mobile-friendly emails:

• Compress images to reduce loading time. Remember that some mobile users still use 3G or slower connections, so try to avoid using high-resolution images.
• Make fonts larger. To compensate for the smaller display of mobile devices, try to set your font size to 13 or 14 pixels.
• Make sure CTAs are text-based. If you use an image as your CTA (Call to Action), there’s a chance that users won’t even see it.
• Shorten your subject lines. To ensure good readability, avoid using long subject lines that needlessly take a lot of space.

Engaging Mobile Users via Video

Video content is long considered as the most effective in terms of engagement. Users love videos so much that email subject lines with the word “video” get 65 percent more click-throughs.

Incidentally, 51 percent of all video plays happen on mobile devices. So if you want to improve your site’s mobile experience, you need to diversify your content strategy and start thinking about video content.

Apart from using tools like Animatron to create professional-looking explainer videos, you should also consider launching live streams with platforms like Facebook Live, and Periscope.

Not only are live videos easier to make, they are also great for winning more views on social media. Studies show that users spend triple the time watching live videos compared to regular videos.

Here are some ideas for your first live video:

• Interview a social media influencer
• Have a live Q&A or webinar session and interact with your audience via comments
• Invite your social media followers to a corporate event
• Show a random video of your neighbor’s pet (social media users love animals)

Turn Your Site into a Progressive Web App

Lastly, another trend you should watch out for is the emergence of progressive web apps or PWAs. These are websites that can deliver app-like experiences to mobile users. They are fast, have offline capabilities, and are specifically optimized for touch-based interactions.

Some of the common features of PWAs include:

• Push notifications,
• Home screen shortcut,
• Quick load times even through 3G connections,
• 100 percent mobile responsive.

Since Google is all about user experience, they cover several case studies on brands that utilize PWAs.

Unfortunately, developing a PWA is not a DIY project you can do overnight. It is a significant investment that can prepare your brand for the future of mobile marketing.

To help point you in the right direction, Here is an infographic by Zeolearn that explains how PWAs work:

Ultimately, it all boils down to user experience and how your brand can make a lasting impact in your audience’s lives. The strategies highlighted above helped you plan your mobile marketing campaign this 2017. What you need now is diligence, patience and relentlessness when it comes to executing these strategies.

Phone User Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "3 Trends That Will Help You Boost Mobile User Experience" was first published on Small Business Trends