How to Boost Your Mobile Site with Google Mobile Analytics
Nick Rojas is a business consultant and writer who lives in Los Angeles and Chicago. He has consulted small and medium-sized enterprises for over twenty years. He has contributed articles to Visual.ly, Entrepreneur, and TechCrunch. You can follow him on Twitter @NickARojas, or you can reach him at NickAndrewRojas@gmail.com.
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By now it should be clear to everyone that mobile is the future of… well, everything. Really! Mobile internet usage has grown tremendously year over year since it was invented. And really, it’s exceeded and continues to exceed all expectations. It seems like the only thing you can be sure about expecting is that it’s going to exceed your expectations!
So it’s vitally important to the future of your business that you upgrade and retool your website to work perfectly in mobile. This can be a bit intimidating, with lots of buzz words like “Responsive Design” and “engagement metrics,” but did you know there’s a tool you can use to cut through the fancy words and get to the real meat of the issue? And it’s even free? We’re talking about Google Analytics. Read on to see how you can use this great, free tool to boost your mobile site and future proof your business.
Make sure you’re mobile friendly
Just how mobile is your mobile site, really? Google released a great tool to help answer this question. It automatically accesses your website and simulates a real mobile browser, enabling it to tell instantly how easy and useful your site is on mobile. If your text is too small to be seen, or you have user unfriendly pop ups and other issues, Google will spot them and lower your score.
The score is calculated based on criteria that Google itself has determined, and considering their monumental influence in the industry, what Google says goes. The Google Mobile Friendly Test can quickly show you your mobile site’s problem areas, making it easy to figure out where to start first when you get around to fixing them (which should be as soon as possible).
Optimize your conversion
Traffic is good, but we know what you’re really after: that sweet, sweet conversion. You want people to spend money! It’s okay. Did you know that Google Analytics can help you optimize your conversion rates as well? Some interesting details about mobile conversions: iPhone and iPad users convert much, much more than Android users. Why is this? It’s theorized that it’s because of the more expensive price of Apple products means that owners of those products are more likely to have a larger disposable income.
Long forms
Do your users need to fill out long, detailed forms in order to convert? This might be hurting your conversion rate. Even on desktop, these forms are conversion killers, and much ink has been spilled talking about ways to optimize them. But on mobile these are practically a no-go. Just think about it: who wants to fill out forms with those tiny screens? Integrating Google Autocomplete on your forms will help you save your users the time and pain of filling out these tedious forms.
Mobile is Google’s priority, so it should be yours too
It almost seems like Google is trying to tell us something by releasing all these great mobile optimization tools, huh? That’s because they are! And the time has come to quit procrastinating and finally make the choice of optimizing your site for mobile. Your future self will thank you.
