3 Reasons Why Having a Mobile Landing Page is a Must
Does having a mobile landing page really matter? It’s a question frequently asked among many marketers who aren’t exactly sure, despite the fact that mobile devices are expected to double between now and 2015 - suggesting more people will soon be using smartphones than computers to get online.
With that in mind, here’s 3 reasons why mobile landing pages are an absolute must-have for any marketer looking to maximize the performance of their campaign:
1. Layout and Navigation
Delivering easy-to-read content that is simple to navigate and quickly understood is one of the most important aspects of any effective landing page. Just because your current LP ticks all the right boxes for layout and design, doesn’t mean it will fare so well when being viewed on a mobile device. Smartphones and tablets have much less screen space than your average desktop, and as a result they face obvious limitations when displaying a landing page that hasn’t been optimized for mobile.
This is something you can check by dropping your landing page URL into iPadPeek to see how it looks to visitors using a smartphones or tablet.
Besides struggling to fit lengthy paragraphs of text and large images in a single frame, mobile devices require visitors to resize and reposition the page, forever pinching and tracking the screen with their fingers in order to access areas otherwise out of view. This creates a poor user experience. People don’t want to have to find important information for themselves once they arrive at your landing page, they expect for it to be provided right away. Constantly having to zoom-out to get a better view of your content is highly frustrating and will only end in visitors abandoning your page altogether.
Image: Example of a regular landing page being viewed on a mobile device (source. iPadPeek)
Furthermore, you don’t want to relinquish total control of navigation. There’s a very good reason why your landing page has such a specific layout and structure. Everything from your initial headline to your call-to-action, by way of a very persuasive sales pitch, has been thoughtfully designed to steer the user precisely where you want them to go - all the while influencing/validating their decision to convert once they get there. Allowing visitors to stray from this path, and letting them view which elements they choose and in what order, removes any influence you might have had, not to mention making the task of ‘finding what they want’ far more difficult.
Landing pages that are optimized for mobile require only the absolute most important elements and even these are scaled for efficiency. Headlines, for example, are typically three to four words max, while ad copy is rendered down to the bare essentials to save space.
Image: Example of a landing page that has been optimized for mobile on a mobile device (source. iPadPeek)
Mobile Landing Page
The end product is a more streamlined version of your landing page (often edited down from your original design) that looks and feels very natural on a smaller device. Visitors need only make fewer gestures to access content they are looking for, making the route to conversion much easier and consequently increasing your click-through rate.
2. Speed Matters
Consider your typical mobile user for a moment. They want to access content as quickly and easily as anybody else, but don’t always share the same luxury of ‘time’ as most desktop users do - such is the pitfall of browsing on the move. This issue is only compounded by the fact that supporting cellular connections for mobile telephones and tablets are much slower than the average broadband setup at the office or home.
Unfortunately, traditional landing pages don’t really do anything to help improve the matter. Sure, best practices dictate that all landing pages should be kept as ‘simple’ as possible, but even this can be too much for most portable devices to handle. Not all mobile devices support Flash and those that do, don’t always execute it as well as would a desktop computer. Hefty css and javascript files can also lead to slow-down and loading errors, while weighty bodies of text and complex imagery can often fail to load altogether.
Mobile landing pages, on the other hand, are inherently “lighter” than traditional landing pages, with fewer elements in order to cater for smaller screen sizes (see above) and consequently run much smoother on mobile devices.
Landing page speed is a critical component of your online marketing efforts. Not only do quicker loading pages equate to higher conversion rates, but they can also help improve your Google AdWords Quality Score. That’s right, Google take Page Speed into careful consideration when assessing your Quality Score, as they believe it to be an integral factor of the overall landing page experience. So if you are investing in paid traffic (bidding on competitive keywords to boost your rankings) then optimizing for mobile can help lower your PPC costs.
3. User Behaviors and Motivation
What about the users themselves? We’ve already established the major differences between mobile and desktop, and the technical aspects that separate landing page experiences between the two, it would be foolish to not look at the differences in user behaviors also. After all, marketing is all about understanding what it is that motivates your audience and then using that knowledge to your own advantage.
In other words, it isn’t enough to have a landing page that simply ‘works’. You need to market to your audience in a way that is specific to them - and when it comes to marketing to mobile users, regular landing pages just don’t do this.
A good example of this would be click-to-call functionality. This provides the user with a telephone number to call via their handset, simply by clicking a button on your landing page. This means that mobile visitors can get in touch with your business while their interest is peaked, which is a very effective way of securing a lead or sale.
Image: Example of a click-to-call button that users might click on your mobile landing page (source. madisonlondon)
While it isn’t definite that mobile users are more motivated to call than desktop users, it is certainly likelier given their choice of browsing device. And a study by Google Mobile Movements, 2011, does in actual fact state that ‘61% of mobile users call after making a local business search’. Therefore it only makes sense to cater to this type of user behavior and provide mobile visitors with an easy option to call.
Mobile Matters
Overall, mobile could be perceived as either a hinderance to your campaign or an opportunity to increase revenue - and for marketers who don’t optimize their landing pages for mobile, it’s always going to be the former rather than the latter. Either way, it’s a burgeoning demographic that can’t be ignored, with a continuously growing number of prospects, which is precisely the reason why landing pages that have been built with mobile users and their respective devices in mind are an absolute must.
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