If you have already taken the initial step of building a responsive website in order to have a mobile-friendly version of your site, you might be wondering what the next steps of your mobile marketing strategy should be. Unfortunately, many businesses owners are not doing anything at all after building a new responsive site. Simply upgrading to a responsive site is not going to automatically increase conversions. Responsive sites need to be properly optimised in order to drive conversions. Here are a few reasons why responsive websites need optimisation and what you can do to achieve mobile marketing success with a responsive website.
Conditional Loading
Conditional loading allows only some features of a responsive website to be loaded depending on the device. Some examples of this include a menu that loads in a different, shortened format when the website is being viewed from a smartphone. Other options can include hiding sidebars, widgets and other items, that are accessible on desktop versions of the site, on the mobile versions of the site.
When you are considering which items to include as a part of each version of the site, think about what is most important to your visitors. Your visitors may interact quite differently with your site depending on the device used to access it. Therefore, analytics data and testing can play a big role in determine which layouts work best with your site visitors.
Optimise Content Delivery By Device
While you might have focused on making sure that mobile visitors to your site are successfully able to navigate the site, what about your content? This includes any videos, infographics, PDF files, music files and more that you want your visitors to see. While these items may display without any issues on a desktop, when accessed via a mobile device there can be problems.
Therefore, you should optimise the delivery of such content for the device that the visitor is using to access it. Create tablet and phone friendly versions of documents. For images, JavaScript can be used to ensure that they behave in a responsive manner. If you are concerned about load times, consider updating the site CSS code by removing multiple external references.
Consider What Content Will Appear Above the Fold
Given the differences in screen size on various mobile devices, the content that appears above the fold will vary greatly. Since the above the fold content will be the first content that your visitor sees when he or she browses your site, it is essential that you control what appears there.
By making sure that the most important content for the page appears above the fold, you can be assured that the marketing message for that page will actually reach the customer.
Faster Load Times
You should also strive to achieve a 1-second load time for your above the fold content on a mobile device. According to research, customers remain most engaged with a website if the responsive loading time is 1-second. This metric can be hard to achieve, but by working with a designer that can focus on the technical aspects of your website’s code, adjustments can be made to make your website load faster.
In addition, it is also important to consider the fact that not all users of your site will have access to a 4G connection. Therefore, the site must also be optimised so that it loads as quickly as possible on lower quality 3G and 2G connections. Take into account the various connection speeds of mobile carriers in order to develop a site that will work well for the majority of your visitors.
Testing
While these are all important suggestions for helping you to build a responsive mobile site that will be effective with your target audience, testing is invaluable. Testing your site can allow you to determine what works best for engaging your site visitors. In addition, analytics data can also reveal which devices are used most often to access your website. This will allow you to put a greater focus on optimising your website specifically for the devices that your visitors use the most.
