As a design agency professional, you must design your clients’ websites with a mobile-first approach in mind. Mobile-first user experiences make it easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for quickly and encourage them to take action. Doing so can help increase conversions and boost sales.
With this in mind, in this article, we’ll explore some tips and techniques you can follow to design better mobile experiences for your clients’ websites and increase mobile conversion rates.
Let’s get started.
Differences Between Mobile UX and Desktop UX
A lot of the time, people use both desktop and mobile devices to access the same websites, for different purposes. For instance, online shoppers generally browse products on mobile devices and log in with their desktop machine to make the actual purchase, since keyboards make it easy to fill out checkout forms.
For this reason, it’s important to make sure you’re delivering a strong mobile user experience that facilitates the actions users are likely to perform on your website through their mobile devices.
But before we explore the different ways that your agency can deliver better mobile experiences, let’s quickly step through the key difference between mobile UX and desktop UX:
- Screen size. Mobile interfaces have significantly less screen real estate than desktop interfaces. It’s important that you’re displaying only what’s strictly necessary and saving space wherever possible. For instance, instead of sticky navigation menus, go for hamburger menus.
- Organizing content. Desktops give you the flexibility to organize your content into multiple columns. With mobile interfaces, however, you have to resort to long scrolling when you have lots of content that needs to be published on a single page.
- Interaction. On desktops, users are likely to interact with your site using a cursor. On the other hand, when you’re designing a mobile UX, you’re able to incorporate all kinds of gestures into your design such as swiping, long presses, and shaking.
- Functionality. Mobile works best for small tasks such as browsing an online catalog, running a quick search query, and comparing product prices. In addition to this, it gives users the option to access information on their mobile device (such as their contact lists), get directions and place calls.
Now that you have a clear understanding of the key differences between mobile UX and desktop UX, let’s take a look at some of the ways you can design better mobile experiences for your clients’ websites.
How to Deliver Better Mobile Experiences
As a designer, optimizing your clients’ sites for mobile can help generate leads and increase conversions.
Here, we’ll step through some of the ways you can design better, high-converting mobile experiences for your clients’ websites. We’ll also recommend some tools that will help you get started with a step in the right direction.
Tip #1: Create Mobile-Friendly Call-to-Action Buttons
Call-to-action buttons (CTAs) guide users towards making a purchase, subscribing to an email newsletter, registering for an account – whatever your conversion goal may be. On a mobile site, it’s even more important that you make your CTA buttons stand out, and that the actions you encourage are aligned with the ways people use smartphones. Here are a few ways to go about it:
- Make the button large and give it a bright color that contrasts with the background.
- Consider the conversion goals that make the most sense given how your clients’ mobile audiences will be using the websites you build, which may differ considerably from their desktop sites.
- Place your buttons in the center of the screen so it doesn’t hinder thumb scrolling.
- Write concise but clear microcopy e.g. Add to Cart, Register Now!, Get Started Today or Download Now.
Most importantly, keep testing! CTAs aren’t a one-size-fits-all solution which is why you have to track performance and test out variants using A/B testing tools like Visual Web Optimizer.
Tip #2: Add Click to Call Functionality
Mobile devices have unique features that aren’t available to desktop users such as the ability to detect the user’s location via GPS or make phone calls. Incorporating these features into your design can give your site’s mobile UX a huge conversion rate boost. Essentially, offering these features guides user choices and makes interactions effortless and delightful for visitors.
When users visit a mobile site, they tend to be in more of a rush and have a clear goal in mind. For example, they may be looking for a phone number, street address or opening hours.
For instance, if you have a contact number published on your site’s contact page, you could enable click-to-call functionality. Or, if the user’s GPS is enabled, you could design your landing page to display location-relevant information or services.
Duda, for example, is a full-fledged website design platform that comes with built-in tools for dynamic, location-aware content, bleeding-fast mobile page load times – and the ability to turn any mobile website into a progressive web app at no additional cost. It allows you to take full advantage of the mobile platform and add a click-to-call button to facilitate phone calls.
Tip #3: Optimize Content Experiences
All user action stems from content experiences. Optimizing content experiences means working towards converting visitors to leads and, eventually, paying customers.
When you’re designing for mobile UX, eliminate friction wherever possible to help users achieve their goals faster. Simply put, the goal is to serve relevant information through your mobile site.
Using tools like Google Analytics and Crazy Egg can help you better understand your customers and create content experiences specifically for them. For instance, you might find that most visitors look at your pricing table, business location, and contact information when they land on your mobile site. This allows you to design user flows to meet your business’s conversion needs.
Tip #4: Offer Online Scheduling
One of the best ways to engage prospective customers, capture more leads, and offer better services is by providing online scheduling functionality through your mobile site using a tool like vCita.
Allowing clients to book and even pre-pay for appointments or consultations with you – without having to speak with anyone – is the epitome of convenience.
There are a number of ways your clients can benefit from offering online scheduling functionality on their mobile sites. For instance, they’ll receive real-time mobile notifications whenever a lead requests to schedule an appointment, enabling them to respond to them right away. Similarly, customers will receive appointment confirmation notifications and reminders directly on their mobile devices.
Conclusion
Mastering mobile UX design is all about making user interactions on your clients’ websites efficient, helping users find what they’re looking for and encouraging them to take a desired action. Designing conversion-optimized mobile website interfaces not only improves customer experience but can help your clients to generate more leads and increase sales.
Let’s quickly recap the main points we covered:
- Create mobile-friendly call to actions that guide the user toward conversion goals.
- Optimize content experiences to create meaningful user flows.
- Leverage mobile-specific functionality to offer features like click-to-call that will help boost mobile UX.
- Improve customer experience by adding online scheduling features to mobile sites.
What are some best practices you follow to design better mobile experiences for your clients’ websites? Let us know by commenting below!
