5 WAYS COMPANIES CAN IMPROVE MOBILE USER EXPERIENCE

While there's no doubt that society has been moving towards a decidedly more mobile oriented world, the charts show the use of mobiles rising even faster than what most people expected.

In today’s day and age, an increasing amount of people browse the internet from their mobile phone than they do from a desktop or laptop. So, companies wanting to attract customers should be well equipped with a robust mobile web browsing experience and not simply any ordinary laggy mobile website. When it comes to the digital marketing space, it is becoming increasingly crucial to improve customer mobile experience.

Focusing on a fluid mobile user experience is an integral part of the customers’ overall perspective of a company. The advantages of mobile users experience can be exploited to define how the user feels and thinks about your product. It involves making a product easier to use and simpler to understand for your target audience. On the other hand, if their experience was confusing or frustrating in any way, it will leave a bitter aftertaste in their mouth, which may lead to them to reconsidering their options in the blink of an eye.

There is an apparent need to adopt a more user-centric approach to their website or app development, emphasizing on the needs of the target users.

According to a recent survey conducted, 85% of people said that mobile devices are a central part of their everyday life. Using the internet over a mobile device is an entirely different experience as that of using it on the desktop. Recent studies have shown that internet users are ditching desktops for pocket-friendly mobile phones. In November 2016, Mobile web usage overtook desktops for the first time. Ever since, there has only been a rise of mobile usage in the world.

In countries like USA and UK, people get online using phones over one-third of the time. But in India, the split was leaning heavily towards mobile use. India accessed the internet through their mobiles nearly 80% of the time.

On a global scale, the percentage of traffic that comes from Mobile devices is 55.79% as compared to the 44.21% of desktops. But the amount of time spend on sites via a desktop computer surpasses that of mobile devices. To decrease the bounce rates for mobiles there is an apparent need to improve the mobile user experience. This way, customers will be more satisfied with their experience and in turn spend more time on the sites.

Here are some tips on how to improve mobile user experience:

• Design for the Device
  
  Visitors using a smartphone to browse a website that’s not mobile friendly will on an average spend less time browsing the site, be less likely to perform any desirable action or be more likely to visit another website instead. It gets frustrating for the user to pinch and zoom on tiny versions of a website designed for desktop viewing.
  Directing mobile traffic to an optimized mobile website is the best solution to this problem. Depending on the audience and the percent of mobile traffic experienced, you may find that you need to develop an app as well as a dedicated mobile site.
  
  
• Visible Call to Action
  
  Mobile users are more goal-oriented as compared to desktop users. They expect to get what they need immediately. Scrolling too much is tedious. They need to be shown engaging content right away and provide a direct route that leads them to the key conversion point.
  A simple button like “Get a Quote”, “Call Us” or “Subscribe” could do the trick. Basically, try and converge all attention to the most persuasive element of the website or app.
  
  
• Lessen Response Time
  
  Mobile Users are impatient, particularly if your target audience is mostly young. Nothing puts off a potential customer more than waiting excessive periods of time for content to show on the screen. According to a survey, 44% of people abandon a site that takes more than 3 seconds to load.
  Response time can be lessened by optimizing the web pages with certain plugins, compromise by using smaller image sizes, minimizing the number of JavaScript or CSS files that require to be loaded to your page. Fewer connections to the server will result in the screen loading exponentially faster, thus reducing the website bounce rates.
  
  
• Simpler Sign-ins
  
  When asking users to sign up and set up accounts, there is an increasing chance of abandonment. In such cases having an option to sign up through their already existing social media accounts like Facebook or Google+ may make the abandonment rates lower.
  This way the necessary information can be acquired from their social media accounts with little to no waste of the user’s time.
  
  
• Incorporate QR Codes
  
  Companies can increase user experience on mobile devices by using QR codes to directly transfer essential information onto the customer’s mobile devices.
  For example, if a company sells ‘Build it Yourself’ furniture, a QR code can be included in the instruction manual which directs them to an instructional video on their website. This would prove to be less tedious for the customer as compared to reading through pages and pages of text. Similarly, QR codes could be used to provide directions to the location of a store using Google maps.

In conclusion, to keep up with the overwhelmingly quick increase in mobile usage, companies must be well equipped with the most cutting-edge technology to improve their mobile user experience and in turn increase user satisfaction!