A responsive site will not be enough 21st April 2015

A responsive site will not be enough 21st April 2015

You will have no doubt heard about the mobile apocalypse that is going to hit Google search on April 21. How on this date non-mobile friendly content will be forever lost for a significant number of smartphone users. A day that will be etched in history as the moment that Google activated a mobile friendly filter. Okay the last part of that sentence didn’t sound too scary but don't let the "friendly filter" name fool you. An average of fifty percent or more of total site interactions are coming from mobile. Losing this many visitors will have a very significant impact on revenue and the health of your company.

There is an assumption that this only effects those sites that don’t provide either a responsive or dedicated mobile experience. While this may be technically the case the reality is more complicated. There is an important distinction between having mobile friendly content and content that is optimised for mobile. As marketers we can be guilty of obsessing over site traffic and not paying enough attention to the individuals behind the search. Being optimized for mobile means understanding the ways that users search, source, share, interact, buy, book, browse, read, work, play, listen, love, learn, laugh and cry through mobile devices and then optimizing the experience accordingly. Improve the mobile touch points and optimize the mobile conversion paths. Perhaps this is best explained by looking at a typical customer interaction on desktop and seeing how it differs from the mobile experience.

The following is a genuine conversation that took place on mumsnet.com last year.

Debbie A: My three year old has just emptied a jar of beet juice over herself does anybody know how to get that out of clothes?

Dimple87: Ahhh that happened to me with my 5 year old. I found some advice on Google. I tried regular detergent directly on the stains first and then used bleach and cold water. I will try and find the link

Dimple87: <Inserts link>

Dimple87: That worked for me

Debbie A: Thanks

Debbie A: Do you remember which bleach you used?

Dimple87: We had some Sun Oxygen bleach in the house so we used that. Oxiclean would work too

Dimple87: Be careful though as they are different strengths

Debbie A: Do you remember where you got it?

Dimple87:They have both in Walmart but you can get a coupon from their Facebook page

Debbie A: Awesome thanks!

Nothing particularly remarkable about this interaction but lets take a closer look at some of the ways a brand can influence the purchase decision. First there is the mums-net community itself where you could use content marketing, contextual advertising, social monitoring leading to direct engagement, guest blogging, site sponsorship, competitions and banner marketing. There is also the article which Dimple87 links to - where text ads, display ads, referral campaigns, content marketing, banners and site sponsorship could be used. There is the word of mouth from the community itself where you could enlist the help of bloggers and opinion formers to help raise brand awareness. The Facebook page provides a host of options including organic posts, targeted links, coupons and offers, “how to guides”, downloads and video tips. Finally the Walmart site with contextual ads, keyword ads, newsletter ads banners and more. I imagine most of us are doing some if not all of the above, but how many of us hands on heart can say that they do not prioritise the desktop experience? If we compare this interaction to a mobile session it could well tell a different story.

Mobile searches often have more direct interactions. Browsing through websites or even a page of blue links is generally considered too time consuming for the ever demanding mobile user. For this reason we often see less steps on the mobile user journey. We see that brands need to provide instant solutions. It is quite likely that a mobile user would type or even dictate a question directly into Google. For example, “how do I get beet juice out of clothes”. The answer comes back as a step by step guide at the top of the search page with a link to a chosen article.

This type of result has been increasing  steadily since Google switched on their Hummingbird algorithm in September 2013. This means we need to take more of a question and answer approach to content creation. The "top task" approach is one that has proved to work well with mobile users. By understanding the tasks that a user wants to carry out we can create a list of questions. By ranking these questions in order of importance we should hopefully be leading users into our most valuable content. Structuring content in this way also means we can implement Q&A schema giving the content a better shot at making it to the instant answer box. Think about the follow up questions "Where can I get it", "which brand to use?" and create a strategy for how to best answer these questions. We won't always get it right of course which is where testing, measuring and improving comes in.

If you were the brand owner of Oxiclean what would you use as the conversion trigger? Perhaps you could link to a discount voucher, show location based stores that stock the item. Link to a more detailed "how to" video? All good ideas and all very effective on mobile too which is why it is so important to connect maps, YouTube and third party discount and social apps. The Facebook page link in the Oxiclean example could either open in an app or in a browser and it is important to be ready for both. Ask yourself are your coupons easily findable on mobile search engines, social search, product search, image search, Siri etc... Are the coupons scannable on mobile devices and can they open in ibooks or equivalent?  Will they be downloaded or emailed and does the email contain schema to trigger mobile alerts according to use by dates etc?

What about mobile apps - if a user asks the question through Siri will it be able to find the app content? Have you created deep links into app content in the App store? Does your branded app allow users to engage or does it elicit the help of other social apps? Is the third party forums and message boards content optimized for mobile search? If not have you created a content curation page which will republish in the correct format? Have you activated keyword based in-app advertising? If the answer is yes then congratulations you are well on the way to surviving the mobile apocalypse but for those who aren’t, having a responsive site may not be enough to save you.