How to think about improving mobile site speed

Hello, hello. I’m Nacia, and in this video we’ll be covering how to think about building a great mobile experience. But before we get into the nuts and bolts, here’s why a great mobile experience is so important.

Sixty-four percent of all online retail is from mobile, but conversion rates on mobile are only half that of desktop. That’s more people browsing, but fewer people buying. So how can you turn all those mobile users into return customers? Let’s see what Adrienne Clem, director of search, growth, and optimization, has to say on the subject.

I’m Adrienne Clem, director of search ads growth and optimization at Google, and I’m here to talk to you about mobile best practices.

Great mobile user experience starts with speed. This is your first impression for a prospective customer and signals not just about the quality of the experience they’re about to have on your webpage, but also indicates the quality of your brand and product. If your page takes too long to load, you may lose the opportunity to show this customer what you even have to offer.

But speed is just the beginning. From there, you need to have an easy-to-navigate-and-use website. Ultimately, it’s about making it as easy as possible for the user to find what they need and convert on your webpage.

Good user experience is also about anticipating what users need and making it easy for them to provide the information that you are asking for — of them. So this is things like one-tap sign-in and autofill to make it easy to capture required information. This can also be simple actions like prompting the correct keyboard. So if you’re asking for information that’s all numbers, ensuring that you’re giving them the numerical keyboard to make it as easy as possible.

And of course, if you do a great job with your customer experience, you’re very likely to have return customers and another opportunity to wow your customers with a great experience that’s more personalized and relevant based on what you know about your new customer. To address the now scarcer data that advertisers have to evaluate media campaigns, many are leaning into automation and the power of machine learning to synthesize available data points to make sure their campaigns are performing as well as possible.

Many advertisers are taking this strategy even a step further by designing their websites in a way that is easier to capture first-party data that can then be leveraged for optimizing user experiences, but also optimizing campaigns. For example, this might mean making a compelling signed-in experience to motivate consumers to sign in to your website and make it easier for you to capture first-party data.

So marketers really need to think about the process of testing their mobile website in-app assets as an iterative, always-on process. And this is to ensure that you’re catching and identifying any issues with your website so that you can correct them and make sure that your users are having a great customer experience, and you’re maximizing your return on ad spend.

The last thing that I would like to say is that we find ourselves in a unique moment right now. The global pandemic either forced people or caused people to increasingly choose to go to the internet to meet their needs. We really have an opportunity to nurture this behavior and ensure advertisers that we’re coming to your online website or app, to meet their needs during the pandemic, continue to do so.

But this won’t happen without amazing and evolving customer experiences for your increasingly mobile-first customer base. Investing in great mobile user experience across website and apps boosts returns for marketing investment, ensures differentiation in an increasingly automated world, and grows customer loyalty.

And that is how we think about mobile UX best practices. Back to you, Nacia.

Thank you so much, Adrienne. I actually do a little browsing and shopping on my mobile phone myself, so I’m all for better mobile retail experiences. There’s no question. Mobile really does matter. In fact, we’ve seen that companies who commit to great mobile design are seeing 32% increases in revenue. And, get this, up to 400% improvement in conversion rates. That’s a whole lot of receipts.

Thanks for watching. And look for more expert insights in our How to Think About series. Until then, have a good one.