How To Convince Your Team to Adopt a Mobile Strategy

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Has your organization balked at the pricetag for a full, mobile-responsive redesign? How about the daunting dual workload involved in separately managing a mobile site (mSite or m-dot) and a desktop site? Does your leadership wave off the importance of mobile due to low mobile traffic? Does the thought of creating a mobile strategy seem like just another buzz-phrase?

These excuses are just that. Excuses. Your customer is on mobile right now, whether you are catering to them or completely ignoring them. You need a mobile-friendly website if you depend on your web content to promote your brand, connect with clients, or sell your products. If you want to seek out long term success, you need to have a mobile strategy in place.

And if you really want to sell mobile strategy to your organization’s leadership, you need to have a strategy to back you up.

MOTIVATION TYPE: Data

Let’s say your leadership is highly risk averse. They need cold, hard facts before investing in any new campaign, service, or product.

Well, the data for mobile is clear. Mobile will soon reach 50% of all internet traffic. Google has already optimized its search algorithms for mobile-friendly websites. The demand for mobile-friendly web content is higher than ever. Google has found that that 52% of users are less likely to engage with a company if the site is not mobile friendly. If your leadership is truly focused on actionable data, then they should be open to developing a mobile strategy.

Do some analytics on your own, even if you already have some level of mobile capability. Look beyond the numbers of people using mobile when accessing your website.

• How are people interacting with your content when they are on mobile devices?
• As the number of mobile users increase, is there a corresponding decrease from desktop?
• Do mobile users vary by day/level of engagement/time on site?
• What type of content do users search across devices?
• Are search queries (internal and referrers) different when they come from mobile browsers?
• Are there any search queries that get redirected to mobile homepage or the desktop?
• Are there any exit pages where mobile users abandon the mobile site for desktop?

MOTIVATION TYPE: Shame

Maybe data is not your leadership’s Achille’s heel. Maybe they are more concerned about how they rank with competitors.

This is where a clear competitive analysis could be a highly convincing tool. Research your competitor’s mobile capabilities. Compile a list of attributes and rank their mobile accessibility with your own.

• Mobile websites (mSites): access via iPhone or Android (you don’t need both)
• Mobile apps for iPhone and Android
• Apps optimized for tablets
• Cross reference your review of mSites, responsive sites, and apps with desktop sites. Is content on mobile different from content on the desktop?
• Global navigation: How many major navigation categories, or is prioritized differently? How do you access primary nav?
• Wayfinding: how easily can users get to a destination? Do landing pages offer meaningful paths, or do you have to bounce back and forth?
• Reading experience: one page or multiple pages? Written clearly?
• Content formatting: Is it designed and formatted for mobile, including tables, lists, etc?
• Media: How are large images/infographics treated? Videos?
• Search: Is there a search function on mobile? How useful are they? Does google send you to the mobile site, or to a specific mobile page?

Make an assessment on where your organization ranks among your competitors. If your competitors are not utilizing mobile, it is a great point to make that you can get ahead of the game.

MOTIVATION TYPE: Growth

If data and competition doesn’t motivate your company’s leadership into adopting a mobile strategy, perhaps cost optimization, brand development and increasing leads will.

With a well-developed mobile strategy, you can cut costs and streamline workflow across platforms. If leadership is balking at a full redesign, suggest investing in a multiplatform CMS (if you don’t have one already). This is the first step towards “COPE”ing: Create Once, Publish Everywhere. Focus on creating structured content that leverages metadata and a CMS optimized for multiplatform publishing. This means creating content “building blocks” that can be rearranged and re-prioritized based on the platform.

As of June 2016, 67% of all Google users are more likely to convert on mobile optimized site. Your presence can increase brand awareness 96% simply by mobile SEO. Mobile provides multiple opportunities for additional growth and brand recognition across the span of a buyer’s journey.

You should, however, make sure that your site is actually mobile-optimized. You can ensure this by considering the following recommendations for mobile:

• Fewer words, but higher number of related terms within content
• Faster load speed (smaller file size, avoiding Flash elements)
• Localization: 88% of “near me” searches come from mobile
• Social media visibility
• Interactive and structured elements
• Reduced ads and registration walls
• Purposefully placed and mobile-optimized images
• Short-Run or Campaign Apps
  • Example: A conference app which provides a full calendar of workshops and keynote speeches, push notifications for favorited events, venue information, nearby restaurants, etc.

MOTIVATION TYPE: Usability

If nothing else, get your team to work on mobile for an entire day. And I mean for as many tasks as you can encourage, from timesheets to product research to client meetings to email.

Get your team to reflect on their experience:

• Which tasks can be accessed by mobile, which are mobile optimized, and which cannot be accessed from a phone at all?
• Is each page or content chunk too long/short?
• Is content too wordy? Have too much jargon?
• Do you get to the main ideas or points?
• Is content structured into chunks, broken up with headings, or into teaser sized chunks on landing pages?
• Is content up to date?
• Is content useful and important?
• Is content easily navigated?

Compare the experience to your own website. How would you feel if every website you interact with on mobile every day was like yours? If you are queasy at the thought, then you need to rethink your stance on mobile strategy.

Sealing the Mobile Strategy Deal

Mobile keeps you honest. Smaller screens and varied user behavior forces you to consider your priorities and the value of the content you are producing. It also forces you to consider how much you cater to user experience overall, not just in certain areas of your digital presence. Mobile makes you a better content producer.

If you really want to go all out, consider leveraging all of these methods to convince your organization that a mobile strategy is necessary for long-term success.

Want more help making a sleek, powerful, mobile-friendly website with an equally successful mobile strategy? Contact us today!