You may have a website, but is your site mobile optimised? If it isn’t and you’re wondering whether you need to worry about the expense, here’s an experiment to try; sit on a bus or a train and observe what people do. Or watch office workers eating their lunch outside in the sun, or check out human beings in any kind of queue at all.
You’ll find them bent over their mobile phones, flicking through their feeds.
The INMAN Connect conference in New York was told that human thumbs move faster than a mouse on a computer. Our brains recognise an ad in less than 0.3 seconds on mobile as we scroll, scroll, scroll until something captures our attention and our thumb touches ‘stop’.
This means that in the battle to build your business online, your best ally – and enemy – is the Thumb!
The conference was also told:
- People spend 30% of their time on mobile every day
- 40% of consumers abandon a site that takes more than 4 seconds to load
- 45% of all shopping journeys create a mobile action
- 88% of milennials access mobile when shopping in store
- 68% of people access mobile while they watch TV. (US eMarketer 2016)
There are three reasons why people use their mobile to go online.
- They need help making a decision
- They want to learn something new
- They want to accomplish a task.
Google call these moments ‘micro moments’. Rather than research taking up a lot of time and feeling like homework, we now squeeze these tasks into downtime such as sitting on public transport or in a queue.
Real estate is ideally suited to a mobile first strategy and micro moment strategy – 92% of people use the internet in their home search according to Google and 49% used a mobile app to start their home search.
Checking out a property online, seeing price estimates, finding tradespeople for repairs, even mortgage calculations – they can all be done in the time it takes to travel a few stops.
With so many of us spending so much time now on our mobiles, your site – especially your mobile site – should be designed to encourage users to find what they want in just a few micro moments. If your site is awkward on a mobile device, users will abandon you.
So is it time to give your website the thumb test?
