Responsive Mobile Web Design: 4 Mistakes Commonly Made

Responsive Mobile Conversion: 4 Mistakes Commonly Made

Roughly 10 years ago, most people utilized desktop computers to access the World Wide Web. In 2006, 77 percent of web usage was accessed using only two screen sizes. Now? Things are very different. That 77 percent of web usage is now being accessed by 10 different screen sizes across various types of technology – laptops, desktops, tablets, netbooks, smartphones, and web-enabled TVs. However, not a single one of those have more than 20 percent market share.

When you go to design a website in today’s day and age, you need to consider that all of these screen sizes are going to be accessing your site. The solution to this is responsive mobile design. However, this is not a magic fix-all. While it can fix the screens-size problem, there are other issues regarding the responsive approach that is often overlooked.

Here are four commonly overlooked issues that could potentially impact your responsive mobile conversion.

1. Bloated Images

When it comes to responsive conversion, images can pose a significant problem. Due to the fact that responsive websites utilize a single markup, it is vital that you make certain that only large and attractive images are offered to Retina iPad displays and that older smartphones are offered images with lower resolution since they will load faster.

For websites that have a lot of images, the problem begins with page speed because of the high-resolution images being rendered to the wrong device. Also, in sending heavy and unnecessary images to wrong devices, the expense of the wasted bandwidth that is used is literally throwing money away.

To ensure that you are properly optimizing images for the right screen sizes as well as resolutions, here are a few tips:

• Consider running your images through a process like Imagemagick to get them at an optimal size.
• Use Lossy Compression in order to reduce the size of your image while maintaining its depth.
• Use Amazon Cloudfront CDN to render your images through multiple servers.

By using these types of hacks, you should be able to see a significant increase in your mobile conversions since they will help you send the right images to the appropriate devices.

2. Slow Load Time

When pages don’t load fast enough, mobile users becme irritated and tend to go to another site that will load faster. In July 2016, the average retail site would load in just under seven seconds. However, research shows that 40 percent of users will leave a page if it takes four seconds or more to load, and 64 percent of shoppers will go somewhere new if they are dissatisfied with a site visit.

Some say that consumers are able to deal with up to 10 seconds of page load time prior to leaving a website; however, it only takes a few seconds’ delay to lead to an unpleasant experience. Larger companies across the world understand the importance of site performance and focus on this since it is essentially a competitive advantage.

3. Long Forms

Who enjoys filling out long forms? Nobody. This is true on desktops, but it is particularly the case on mobile devices. Therefore, you want to ensure that you are not utilizing long forms that require your users to type a significant amount of text. These will only frustrate your site visitors, but they will also cause your conversion rates to suffer, especially if the long forms are being used for transactions of some kind.

For example, Expedia lost $12 million dollars due to an unnecessary long form that confused their visitors. HubSpot had a form that had four fields, but they reduced it to three and was able to improve conversion rates by 50 percent.

So, shorter forms are always going to the way to go, especially when dealing with mobile devices.

4. Ignoring the Intent of Mobile Users

Another mistake that people tend to make is that responsive design has the ability to remedy all issues that you are having. While it would be great, it simply is not true. Of course, responsive website designs do fix many user experience issues, it doesn’t take everything into consideration, especially the goals of your users.

According to some research, there is actually a gap of 270 percent between the conversion rates of desktop and mobile simply because everyone gets mobile versions wrong.

With desktops, there are long titles and lots of words that tend to have an impact that is completely opposite to mobiles. If you offer more text on a mobile device, the page is going to be hidden from the user and they won’t be able to achieve their end goal, which is generally the call to action (CTA).

So, aside from the site’s menu bar, you need to make sure that you are always focusing on assisting your users in navigating around your site easily – particularly any CTA buttons. Make sure that you keep mobile users in mind when you are designing your website and ensure that their navigating is easier, keeping your conversion rate in mind.

Conclusion

The usage of mobile media is far surpassing others – print, radio, TV and desktop. More and more people are using mobile devices to gain access to the internet; therefore, it is vital that your business has a mobile site that is easy-to-use. If it is difficult to maneuver, mobile users will become irritated and move on to another website.

If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, users will abandon shopping carts, fail to complete forms, leave y our website, and do business with your competition. This will not only affect your conversion rate, but it will also impact your bottom line.

If you need help getting your website mobile-friendly, contact us at WebDetail today and we will help get the ball rolling.