More than half of overall web traffic comes from mobile yet according to recent research by Google, it appears most of us in the UK still don’t offer the best experience for our mobile visitors. I’m not talking just about making it mobile friendly (where your website layout adjusts to fit the device), this is about speed and usability.
The average time it takes to fully load a mobile landing page is 22 seconds, according to new analysis by Google. Yet 53% of mobile site visitors leave a page that takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Somewhere between 3 and 22 is a big problem.
It doesn’t really matter what industry you are in, whether consumers are shopping, paying bills or viewing an article, they want and expect a quick result online. In short, speed equals revenue.
Google/SOASTA recently analysed the probability of a mobile site visitor bouncing as the page load time increased and the results were scary for those with slower sites – see below.
When it comes to mobile pages, speed and size matter. You can see how your current site scores on mobile friendliness and mobile page speed at Test My Site.
How to improve your mobile users’ experience
Despite the bad news, there’s plenty of low-hanging fruit.
Simply compressing images and text can be a game changer—30% of pages could save more than 250KB that way. (I use Easy Thumbnails to reduce my images down but there’s plenty of free software available).
You need to keep your visitors engaged on mobile and focus on building mobile-first experiences. Mobile users tend to be very goal-oriented – they expect to be able to get what they need from a mobile site easily and immediately so it’s important thought is put into the mobile design. For example on the home page keeping calls-to-action front and centre, keeping menus short and sweet and making it easy to get back to the homepage.
Google provide a free guide on the principles of mobile site design – share it with your web developer if it’s not your thing.
If you need more help and advice on making your website easy for your mobile visitors, please get in touch.