January 10 2013

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The Time for Mobile Site is Now: Figuring Out Your Mobile Traffic Trends

4 Steps to Decide if It’s Time for a Mobile Site

You’ve likely heard about the necessity of making your website mobile-friendly. Maybe you’ve seen our B2B Mobile Marketing infographic. But… you haven’t made the investment to engage your mobile visitors. Perhaps you aren’t quite sure if it fits within your 2013 internet marketing budget or maybe you’re uncertain how this applies to your website in particular. Are you unsure where to start? We’re here to help.

Step 1: Become Your Own Mobile Customer

This is an easy exercise. Search for your company on a smartphone as a customer would. Do you show up on a map, in a paid search ad, and/or in the organic rankings? How well? How else are you found? If you had a difficult time reaching your site, mobile marketing may be something to consider.

Browse your site as a customer would. How hard is the site to navigate? How does your site appear- are the text and images presented well? How difficult is it to click through the pages or on calls to action?

Attempt to contact your company. Do you find yourself filling out a long form? Are the phone number, address and hours of operation easily located? Are other communication avenues, such as social media, available?

How was your customer mobile user experience? If you found yourself zooming and scrolling through text, attempting to type in information into a lengthy contact form, you now have some insight into how your mobile users browse your site. Your site’s mobile experience is sometimes the first impression a future customer has of your company. We know how important that impression is, especially for B2B digital marketing. You want this impression to be of the quality that they’d experience on your desktop site, or if they called you directly. If your site does not display well on a smartphone or if you’d like a stronger mobile presence, consult with TopSpot about mobile web development.

Step 2: Find How Many Mobile Customers You Currently Have

This takes some knowledge of Google Analytics, but it is not as difficult as it sounds.In fact, we made a simple tutorial video to explain how:

The mobile visitor number may or may not be a significant fraction of your business, but with the current adaption rate of mobile phone web browsing, this number is only certain to grow.

You must also ask: how often do you review your mobile stats? All TopSpot clients receive their mobile metrics in their monthly or quarterly reports. Be sure to review this information or have your account manager explain how to find it.

Step 3: Figure Out Your Mobile Traffic Trends

Ok, you see how many users you have, but how has that number increased over time? How are these mobile users reaching your site? What search queries (keywords) are they using, which pages are they visiting? Are they converting? You can see all of this information quite easily as well. Here is a more in-depth mobile traffic tutorial:

Step 4: Assign a Mobile Champion at Your Company

This is a move straight out of the Google Mobile Playbook and a key takeaway from our Google B2B Breakfast. This person should be someone who is a serious mobile user, understands the mobile audience and can be the mobile evangelist for your organization. Perhaps the person reading this blog post right now is your mobile champion! This person should be asking “How should our marketing adapt to mobile?” and should be viewing any business decision from your organization with a mobile lens. They should be working closely with TopSpot to develop a mobile marketing strategy unique to your business.

You may still be commitment-phobic, but you now should have a better idea of how friendly the mobile user experience on your site is, how many of your customers access your site via their smartphones and their behavior on your site. You should also know what questions you should be asking, both within your organization and with your marketing team. The conclusion of the Google Mobile Playbook states this more eloquently than I ever could, so I will end with their words:

“…we believe that mobile represents a sociological shift with how users relate with both the digital and physical world. Businesses that understand this will win.

Contact TopSpot with any mobile marketing or website development questions you may have.