Year of Mobile: Mobile-optimized not optional

Posted by Melissa Summers on Wednesday, February 22, 2012

By next year 85% of mobile devices will be web enabled (Google) and 62% of adults with mobile phones in the 25 – 34 age range own smartphones. In the 18 - 24 and 35 – 44 age range 54% of mobile phones are smartphones. (Nielsen)

What are people using those phones for? More than half the time the smartphone isn't used as a phone.

They're comparing prices while shopping, they're making and confirming travel plans on the go and looking up recipes while at the grocery store. Increasingly they're shopping and looking for local restaurants and businesses as well. Mobile search has grown by 400% in the last year (Google).

And still, 79% of large online advertisers don't have mobile optimized sites (Google). Is your brand one of them? As marketers, you've got to be where your customers are when they're ready to talk. Your consumers are ready to talk when they're not in front of the computer, 39% of them even want to engage while they're in the bathroom.

Here are three mobile optimized sites clearly designed to function for the mobile consumer. 

Kraft

Kraft has a content rich environment with several categories of recipes and within those categories are even more categories. Within their full website, there are links for specific Kraft brands. It's overall a useful website to browse at your leisure. But on a smartphone the prospect of browsing is overwhelming. 

For Kraft's mobile optimized site they've boiled down what the mobile consumer is most likely looking for while on the go. They've taken the basics and created an interface that allows a busy consumer to look up a recipe while at the market. This combination of simplified usability and utilitarian value to consumers and a great example of optimal function for the busy mobile consumer.

Garnet Hill

Garnet Hill knew a rapidly increasing amount of their site sales and traffic was coming from mobile enabled devices. The also knew the site wasn't meant for the mobile consumer and was probably losing sales because of the busy interface meant for a larger desktop screen. 

The result, in the two months after launching their mobile optimized commerce site, they saw a 300% rise in mobile sales. Hard to argue with that kind of return on investment.

My Coke Rewards: Design a Family Music Cover

Coke's Design a Family Music Cover contest is a full website experience where users design music cover artwork using many different options for things like fonts, images and music genre. They can also view the gallery and vote for their favorites.

The mobile optimized site takes the full album cover experience and reformats it into what makes most sense for the site on a phone. Designing the album cover on a phone would be difficult for consumers, instead they can easily browse the gallery and vote for their favorites. 

By the end of 2012, 85% of mobile phones will be web enabled, the mobile web is no longer a trend, it's now another vital component of consumer engagement.

Are you one of the 79% of businesses without a mobile optimized presence? Let's get your brand on the other side of that statistic.