Today’s consumers expect a faster, better mobile experience than ever before. Surveys have shown that users are more than 60% less likely to make a future purchase from a site with less than stellar mobile optimisation.
Finding a starting point
Most successful mobile sites load in five seconds or less on 3G mobile. There are a number of online tools to help you determine your site’s current speed and how it stacks up against the competition.
Load testing for mobile is one of the easiest ways to minimise risk, as it helps you determine not only how much capacity a site has under normal usage but also during peak times, when increased traffic could slow page load significantly.
Use the Google checklist
After the load test, you can use this helpful checklist from Google PageSpeed to make sure your site is fully optimised for mobile users:
- Avoid landing page redirect
- Enable gzip compression
- Improve server response
- Leverage browser caching
- Remove unnecessary data resources
- Optimise images and CSS delivery
- Prioritise visuals
- Remove external scripts
Other tools to try
If you feel like your mobile site could still use a bit more tweaking, you can dive deeper into optimisation to continue to improve your site for users on the go.
AdWords has a new tool called “Landing Pages” that identifies the URLs that drive sales, are mobile-friendly or are not performing particularly well.
Search campaigns can now direct clicks to Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages, which load almost instantly for a better user experience. Google is even working to expand AMPs to e-commerce merchant pages for faster online shopping.
Google also plans to roll out background click measurement requests over the next several months, which will deliver customers directly to a site’s landing page from a single ad click. This could be an invaluable tool for sites that are already equipped for parallel tracking.
Conclusion
Mobile is no longer the future – it’s here, now. If you’ve been holding off on mobile optimisation, it is time to explore how improving users’ mobile experience will translate into increased traffic and improved sales and conversions.
