A recent study of Australia’s top 1,000 websites in Australia has found that more than 70% of them are not optimised for mobile – that is tablets and smartphone devices – across government and enterprise organisations.

Given that the majority of them are finding that their traffic is increasingly coming from mobile devices, it’s clear that these organisations are lagging behind and missing out on capitalising on the potential. So, can you afford to stay in that group and limp along whilst those around you optimise and reap the benefits of not only the recent changes in Google’s algorithm (more about that here) but an improved user experience for your customers and prospects. If your website is not optimised for mobile then it is unlikely to appear in the top search result listings on smartphones.

Mobile first, content first

Your users come to your website for a reason. They want information and they want it fast. Rest assured they wouldn’t be too reflective about the fact that they may be searching on a mobile device. They’re more interested in finding relevant, easily accessible content. Apart from the benefits of being found on organic searches on mobile devices there are a number of other considerations that will help your organisation internally.

Mobile first, content first:

• Focuses attention on important messages you want to communicate through your website – content hierarchy
• Helps you to prioritise the actions that you want your users to take, be it call a number, find your store nearest to them, get directions to that store and, of course, buy right away directly from their device
• Ensures you have the content structure right in terms of the type of content (text, image, audio and video) and its objective, whether promotional, informational or entertaining
• Helps you categorise what is TOFU, MOFU and BOFU – top, middle and bottom of the funnel marrying your sales process with your user’s buying journey
• Ensure the user experience is intuitive through site architecture and navigation It’s still all about the user

From the user perspective, it’s all about simplicity and relevance, preferring websites that are easy to navigate through and contain content worth navigating to. They’re looking for the path of least resistance and want to connect and convert as efficiently as possible.

The flipside of convenience and relevance is confusion and irrelevance. If you make your site overly complex with redundant navigational structures, you will cause confusion and distraction away from the path to connection and conversion. Unhelpful or irrelevant content will cause frustration and disaffection and generally negative feelings towards your brand.

Employing responsive web design and making certain the information and navigation of your web-based content provides a convenient and relevant user experience will ensure success for your business.

Our experience

At Digital Garden, we’ve been creating online experiences for our clients with websites designed and built to mobile first, content first strategies for some years now. They’re fully committed to putting their users front and centre in their digital marketing. Talk to us today about how we can help your business leverage responsive design to your advantage.