The Importance of Optimizing your Landing Pages for Mobile

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The Importance of Optimizing your Landing Pages for Mobile

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A landing page appears when a user clicks on organic or paid search results. These pages usually have a specific purpose. As such, they should include a strong call-to-action, user-centric design, and simplified navigation. However, in today’s hyperconnected era, just designing a landing page is not enough. With the rise of mobile searchers, you will need to optimize it for smaller screens, as well.

In this article, you will learn why optimizing landing pages for mobile is important and how to do it right.

The Number of Mobile Searchers is Growing

The number of mobile users keeps growing and this won’t change anytime soon. In 2019, the number of mobile users worldwide has grown to 6.8 billion. In 2020, this number is projected to reach 6.95 billion. The reason for that is simple. Mobile devices are now affordable to both individual and corporate users. Let’s just take the example of many telecommunications companies that offer mobile phones on an interest-free repayment period of up to 36 months. 

With the growth of mobile users, the number of mobile searches is also increasing. Surveys found that mobile accounts for 58% of all Google searches. Therefore, not optimizing your landing pages for mobile, you would miss out on an opportunity to rank higher in mobile searches, attract the wider audience, and boost organic traffic and conversions. 

Google Now Crawls and Indexes a Mobile Version of your Site

A few years ago, Google only assessed your site’s desktop version when ranking and crawling pages. However, with the rise of the mobile landscape, that changed. Given that mobile users spend more time online than desktop ones, Google decided to provide them with more appealing and relevant search results. 

That’s why it rolled out the Mobile-First Index in 2018. In other words, Google has started crawling the web from a mobile browser view. And, if your site doesn’t meet its standards, chances are your rankings will go down.

Website Responsiveness Impacts User Experience and Conversions

Tech-savvy mobile searchers understand the importance of user experiences. Namely, 85% of them believe that a mobile website should be as good as or better than its desktop counterpart. They don’t want to waste time waiting for your page to load or trying to click on a tiny CTA button. If they don’t like the overall appeal and user-friendliness of your landing page, they will leave it immediately.

Statistics prove this true. While 48% of users claim they feel frustrated when a site is poorly optimized for mobile, 52% of them claim that bad mobile experiences make them less likely to do business with you. Poor user experiences will not only hurt customer engagement and conversions, but also your overall online reputation. Users not only memorize poor user experiences, but also spread the word about them.

Building Mobile-Friendly Landing Pages: A Brief Checklist

Now that you know why optimizing landing pages for mobile is critical, let’s see what actionable steps you should take.

  • Implement Click-To-Call Buttons

Your contact information needs to be easily accessible on your site. Keep in mind that just adding your phone number or email address to your landing page is not enough. Mobile users will want to connect with you directly from the page, without having to leave it or open multiple apps. One of the best ways to improve their experiences is to use large click-to-call buttons.

  • Optimize Navigation

Complex navigation menus will eat up lots of your mobile page space. That’s why you should consider using hamburger menus for mobile pages. Mobile searchers are familiar with this symbol and know what they can expect to see when clicking on it. As for categories and subcategories, always use simple and informative titles.

Apart from simplifying your navigation menu, you should also make it highly accessible. One way to do so it to use sticky navigation that helps users orient themselves easier and find the right content faster. 

  • Create Shorter Content

Your mobile landing pages should be light and user-friendly. As such, they shouldn’t include all of the content from your desktop pages. For starters, reduce the size of your desktop content and focus on the most critical points. Always make sure that the value and quality of your content are not compromised. You should also use bullet points, add headings and subheadings, and leave lots of white space to make your content easier to follow. Finally, keep your sentences to-the-point and your paragraphs short and clear. 

  • Add Visual Content Strategically

Remember that not all visitors will land on your page using Wi-Fi. Some of them will use their limited mobile data. Therefore, when using images, compress them first. There are many image compression tools that will reduce image size without hurting its quality. If you’re using video content, avoid auto-play. Your visual content should be simple and effective, without slowing down your site or distracting a user from converting.

  • Use Higher Contrasts in Design

Contrasting colors in your page design have multiple purposes. First, they’re visually appealing. Second, they make your content easier to read and digest. Most importantly, they cater to mobile users’ needs, irrespective of their location. For example, outdoor light usually makes it difficult for mobile users to read text on their screens, especially if there is no contrast between images, text, and background. That’s where using black letters on bright backgrounds may help.

  • Speed Things Up

Apart from being one of the most important ranking factors, speed is also a critical user experience factor. Stats claim that the majority of mobile users expect pages to load in less than 3 seconds. And, if your page load time ranges between 1 second and 5 seconds, the probability of bounce will grow by 90%. 

There are many steps you could take to optimize your site speed. Like I’ve mentioned above, you could start by compressing image file sizes. Next, upgrade to a better hosting plan, allow website caching, and use a reliable content delivery network (CDN). Finally, you could start using Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs) that are lightweight and designed specifically to help your site load faster.

Conclusions

A powerful landing page is the one that grabs people’s attention, engages them, and converts them. That’s why you need to optimize it strategically. This way, you will increase your organic rankings, boost user experiences, and maximize conversion rates. Above all, you will boost your online brand image and turn your target audience into brand advocates.

I hope these insights and tips will help you get the most out of your mobile-friendly landing pages!