Mobile optimisation now mandatory

April 23, 2015

From 21^st April mobile optimisation became mandatory, but we’ve all been doing this anyway right? Well, it appears now, and rightly so, we don’t have a choice as the almighty Google are now favouring mobile optimised and friendly websites over those that aren’t.

What does this mean for your marketing, search and social presence?

You need to go mobile.

Mobile isn’t new – brands, sites, retail industry have all been moving this way for years – and today more people around the world have cell phones than ever had land-lines. (QZ.com, 2014)

Browser habits now include shifting, stacking and meshing – in essence cross, multi and simultaneous device surfing. So sites and your content need to cater to this new user psyche.

Going mobile – top tips!

Consistent content

Content needs to be consistent – from social to site, and site to mobile – the user experience is still paramount. Just because users are using different devices doesn’t mean they should see a completely different environment. Brand familiarity should be top of your agenda when it comes to branding, message and function.

Digestible and simple – make it easy to follow

From your tweet, to your social branding to your site – keep at the forefront of your mind that mobile users are on the go – they want content quickly. Making your content or messaging clunky will lose attention. So the age old mantra of simplicity really is key.

Consider your platform

In a recent client campaign we knew that 80% of our traffic from twitter was coming from a mobile device (similar stats with Facebook) – so we knew we had to design mobile optimised imagery and messaging. Therefore, we designed assets that users didn’t have to click on or scroll further for more information as knew they were being absorbed on a mobile screen. Whereas on LinkedIn – the majority of our traffic on social campaigns was still coming from desktop so we were able to use this channel to focus more on detailed discussions and long-form content.

Big CTAs

Not just thinking from a mobile perspective but social too – if you are using CTAs to drive to further content – you need to give your users easy instructions. Again, simple steps that are easy to follow works best. If driving downloads, clear buttons in visual assets work well.

Hope those short tips get you started on your way – give us a tweet if you would like anymore advice.

Latest Posts

Design and disability are so often discussed in terms of basic “accommodation” and “access,” yet my visit to the V&A’s Design and Disability exhibition completely shifted that perspective. Rather than framing disability as an issue to be fixed, the exhibition presents it as a culture, a rich set of identities, and a radical design force shaping practice from the 1940s right up to today.

Lurkers are your biggest audience and they’re deciding in silence. They watch in feeds, sanity-check you in comments, communities and reviews, then repeat whatever proof is easiest to quote internally. That’s why social feels harder, it’s no longer a click machine, it’s an answer surface. Ofcom shows AI summaries are now common in search results, and YouTube remains the UK’s biggest social utility by reach and time spent. If your story is inconsistent, your evidence is scattered, or your customer proof is buried, lurkers can’t do the job of trusting you for you.

Pinterest has rolled out a brand-new Media Planner inside its advertising tools, and it’s designed to make planning and managing Pin campaigns a whole lot simpler. In short? It gives you a clearer view of what you’re running, who you’re targeting, and what results you can expect…