Mobile phones are now the entry point to the internet.

Surprisingly, most of the search queries take place on mobile devices than on computers today. There are more tablets and smartphones sold each day as compared to computers, an indication of the changing landscape of mobile content.

Mobile devices are now becoming the first priority in establishing an online presence of a business. Hence they play a massive role in how mobile content is created and consumed.

What this means is that the content that you have is now being read by people on different devices, in different and previously unknown contexts. If you’re going to reach out to your audience, who are now primarily on mobile, you need to understand the context in which they’re reading your content and the device.

1. Optimizing Content for Mobile

Google has been tweaking its algorithm continuously to ensure it surfaces mobile content.  Google recognized this changing landscape and officially announced last year that a mobile friendly website is going to be a search ranking factor. You will be surprised how many websites are out there that are not mobile friendly.

New techniques have been developed and introduced to improve mobile content.

a. Innovative Technologies

Accelerated Mobile Pages is a technology from Google which when added to your site, will ensure that the same pages are shown on mobile phones in a fraction of a second.

The technology optimizes the site for low bandwidth and therefore access to content is much faster. The idea is that the whole platform is designed just for pure readability and pure speed.

FB has started a similar initiative after it realized how many people were consuming content on FB through mobile phones. Instant articles load images and text almost instantly when you browse on mobile phones.

b. Knowing your reader’s device

Every mobile device has a different screen size. There are multitude of mobile operating systems, with iOS and Android dominating the OS landscape. Ensuring a consistent user experience across all these devices and platforms can be quite a challenge.

Eventually technology will standardize that experience, but for now, there is some overhead involved here. For example, if you create a website, there are bound to be certain elements that look different on an iPhone compared to an android phone.

Even across web browsers, we might see some differences. In our case, we do extensive cross browser testing and simulation on different screen sizes to ensure the integrity of the design is maintained.

c. Content formats for mobile

Instagram, Vine and Boomerang are mobile apps that can be used to create mobile specific content as these are native mobile apps.
Something like textgram that lets you create images with text to share on Instagram is a good example of how content can be created on the phone.
For more information on content creation, take a look at our blog post on Mobile Content Marketing Tools

2. Mobile User Behaviour

User Behaviour with respect to mobile phones are inspected to smoothen and optimize friction points in the user experience.

a. Access to content

It is very important to know the ways through which users are accessing content. More important to know what kind of content. Touch Heatmaps are aggregated recordings of all user interactions including tap, pinch and swipe. With this information any business can understand the content the user requires.

Utilizing tools that provide visual in-app analytics also enable you to see, in real-time, where users are spending the most time, what screens they are in when they abandon the app, which screens have the highest quit rate or have UI problems, what is the user flow and much more.

b. Reading

Google analyzed their mobile users and came up with a strategy to help guide its mobile web and app development strategy.
The basis of their guidance is that mobile users fall into 3 main patterns of behaviour with the following names:

  • Repetitive Now

Repetitive Now users are seeking recurring real-time information. They use their mobile device to stay in touch with ongoing, repetitive changes.

  • Bored Now

Users under this are often a by-product of waiting and seeking distraction, entertainment or connection through a mobile device.

  • Urgent Now

These users are seeking urgent information on their mobile device. The information is often to address a time or location-sensitive need.

To succeed with your mobile project you need to figure out which of these 3 describes how your users will use your product.

c. Sharing

When a user is completely satisfied with the Reading experience, Sharing is the next step.
If you manage to provide the right kind of information they require, they keep coming back.
Unfortunately according to a study, out of 61 million mobile sessions, only 0.2% of mobile users do any social sharing.

Image Source: Moovweb

It is very critical to ensure your website or app links to various modes of sharing via app accessibility is quite necessary and important. The heart of the sharing problem is that users must be logged in in order to share. If you’re not logged in, sharing can be kind of a problem.

Another study indicates that sharing on mobile devices is significantly more frequent than on desktops. Furthermore, the iPhone is the most commonly used mobile device for social sharing.

3. How to Build Content with Mobile in Mind?

Since mobile content optimization increases performance, new and innovative methods have to be established.
Businesses can adapt to this trend by keeping a few important factors in mind.

> Mobile ads must make every character count.
> Highlighting the information that matters most to your mobile customers.
> Provide useful and timely local information with location extensions.
> Ensure that your most important information is in the first line of ad text.
> Use mobile preferred creatives to help consumers quickly and easily take action while on the go.

4. Mobile Ads

Mobile device users have heightened expectations with growing technology. They need everything right away. Mobile content must be driven by customer expectation and feedback.

Studies have shown that 32% of consumers will start abandoning slow sites between one and five seconds.
A one second delay in page load time can result in 11% fewer page views, 16% decreased customer satisfaction and 7% lost conversions.
An average buyer spends time on researching, comparing and learning before actually buying. This calls for a new generation of ad experiences that are richer, more engaged and designed for screen swipes. Including information like rates, availability, locations, user reviews, editorial descriptions and high resolution photos would create an impression and increase interest.

In the end, technology will help you create and distribute content for mobile phones. Google and FB are now helping you optimize your existing content, with minor tweaks, to be more mobile friendly.

As a business, it is critical to focus on user behaviours, understanding the context in which they read your content and what kind of content might be better suited to mobile.

This will ensure you don’t lose out on the opportunity of providing the best experience of your brand on a mobile device and converting audience into customers on mobile devices.

On a whole we witness a billion interactions of consumers with various sites and apps. The real number can be overwhelming but this complexity can be mastered only with the right kind of mobile content.

Everything ultimately boils down to delivering the best possible experience to your audience in the moments that matter.

Check out our blog to know more about Instant Articles, AMP and How to improve your Corporate Blog Design.

Feel free to leave your comments below!!


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