Think mobile web: Advice for marketers in the age of the customer

Don’t settle for responsive: Design experiences that are meant for the mobile web

Just shrink your website down to a smaller screen using responsive web design techniques that aren’t optimized for mobile devices. You’re right. That’s the worst possible piece of advice for marketers who are trying to differentiate their brands through creating meaningful mobile moments.

In the age of the customer, marketers need to embrace one-size-doesn’t-fit-all solutions as responsive web design is not mobile first and it miserably fails to delight mobile users.

According to the “Mobile Search Moments,” research conducted by Google and Nielsen, 77% of mobile searches occur at home or work. Therefore mobile search is always on, happening on the go.

Insider’s CEO, Hande Cilingir says: “Considering users’ growing tendency to use mobile devices, marketers now feel the urgency to optimize experiences on mobile channels. Based on Insider’s data, 62% of traffic to digital channels comes from the mobile web, but only 20% of these visits are converting.”

A recent Forrester research found that 93% of digital business professionals are using, piloting, or planning to test responsive web design. This will simply translate into bad experiences, frustrated users, incomplete journeys, lower conversions and ROI for most marketers. Sounds bad, well it is.

Tapping into your mobile web conversion potential to optimize your funnel for more conversions and customer engagement, you’ll have to rethink how you can deliver highly-contextual mobile web experiences — and design experiences that are meant for the mobile web in the first place. As Forrester analyst Ted Schadler says, you must deliver a different experience on mobile devices “one that is task-oriented, loads instantaneously, uses the available real estate wisely, works with one hand, and delivers service directly into the full context of a consumer’s mobile web moment.”

Even though marketers are aware of the need to deliver optimized experiences on the mobile web, most face technological roadblocks, time constraints, lack of resources or knowledge about what turns mobile traffic into conversions. They simply settle for mobile-responsive design.

Inspired by the unique needs and challenges of marketers, we’ve recently introduced the Insider Mobile Web Suite for marketers, including the world’s first exit intent technology for the mobile web and other unique features such as category optimizer, smart recommender, purchase triggers and more.

Think mobile web. Start delivering relevant, seamless and converting mobile experiences.