Infinite Path » Mobile SEO

Ecommerce companies need to do more to make mobile users convert

admin — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 16:42:02 +0000

With smartphones and tablets becoming more prevalent in today’s society, it’s no surprise that mobile ecommerce is beginning to take off. The promise is though, even though people are increasingly using mobile devices for browsing, this just doesn’t seem to be converting into sales in the same way as it does for computer users.

According to a new report from Screen Pages, mobile accounts for ten per cent of ecommerce website visits, however, the conversion rate is around half that of PC users.

Some 30 websites were analysed for the report, which looked at more than 1.5 million visitors to ecommerce sites – none of which were optimised for mobile browsing.

The average bounce rates were lower for mobile users – showing sites must be doing something right when they’re engaging smartphone customers. Mobile users were also found to be less likely to view multiple pages per visit. If you think about it, it’s not surprising, since with a smaller screen, mobile users are bound to be less keen to scrawl through hundreds of pages.
Bearing this in mind then, it’s vital for ecommerce sites to ensure they have a mobile-friendly website, otherwise people will definitely take their trade elsewhere. The conversion rates in the Screen Pages report were shown to be a huge 41 per cent lower than those from PC users – really emphasising the importance of trying to engage mobile customers.

Mobile-friendly websites will take some effort to set up and if ecommerce retailers can’t afford that kind of outlay, there is an alternative. Looking at your current website on a mobile device will help you to ascertain if there are any problem areas, which you can then sort out on your main site.

Remember, there are some things which are easy to do on a mobile device – scroll and click, but it’s not quite so simple to type. This is the kind of thing to bear in mind when trying to make a mobile-friendly site – make things big and clickable, not small and fiddly.

You never know what effect these kind of simple changes could have upon your conversion rate. It makes a lot of sense for ecommerce sites to do whatever they can to take advantage of the high volume of mobile traffic they’re seeing come through.

Why the rise of smartphones means mobile search engine optimisation is now crucial

admin — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 12:22:07 +0000

Although not a daunting prospect, stepping out of a train station into a city you’ve never visited before certainly has the potential to be a frustrating experience. The city centre, if you aren’t already in it, will no doubt be well signed but most people’s needs are usually more complex than simply wandering around until they come to a built up area. So in this case, let’s pretend our fictional traveller is hungry, specifically he wants some nice Italian food. The problem is, of course, he’s never been to this particular city before and has no idea where to find a restaurant let alone one which will meet his exacting standards.

So what does he do? Well he could ask someone on the street for a recommendation but that would still leave him strolling around looking for a stranger to approach, hoping they’ll provide an answer before following their garbled directions to a place which may or may not be open. Rather than risk a wild goose chase, he instead reaches into his pocket pulls out his smartphone and using Google searches for “best Italian food in” and the name of whatever conurbation in which he happens to have found himself. Then based on a combination of the results that appear, which undoubtedly contain a large number of reviews, and the location of the eateries in question makes his choice, loads the location information into his phone’s inbuilt map system and a short while later he is seated and ready to order.

Of course, things do not always run this smoothly – anyone who uses their smartphone’s map feature on a regular basis is likely to have run up a blind alley at some point, figuratively if not literally. However, what the example does illustrate is the growing importance smartphones play in people’s lives and, as a consequence, the growing importance of mobile search to businesses.

Traditionally, search engine optimisation has been focused on driving online transactions. A potential customer enters a query finds a site and then, more often than not, any business which takes place will occur online. However, with smartphones changing the way people interact with search engines they will undoubtedly start to drive customers towards businesses in a way which seemed unimaginable ten years ago.

With this in mind, businesses of all sizes need to give some serious thought to mobile search optimisation and online reputation management (after all, our fictional traveller wouldn’t have selected a restaurant with bad reviews, or one with an adverse news story about it on the first page of Google).

When you consider 100 million smartphones were sold in the last three months of 2010, ignoring the business opportunities they seems as self-defeating as ignoring the rise of the internet would have been ten years ago.

Android dominates smartphones as iPhone slips

admin — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 13:45:19 +0000

The market for smartphones almost doubled in the last year, rocketing from 41 million devices in 2009 to 80.5 million this year, new figures released by Gartner show.

Gartner’s research, which compared sales in the third quarter of 2010 with those of the same period 12 months ago, also revealed Google’s Android operating system was the only one to increase its market share over this period.

This on its own isn’t bad news for Google’s rivals, Apple and Research in Motion, as the boom in the market means they still managed to increase the number of units they sold. However, Android’s increase in market share is phenomenal – it went from just three per cent last year to 25 per cent in Q3 2010.

Whether this level of growth can be maintained is yet to be seen, but given the fact saturation point for smartphone sales has to be reached sooner or later it seems unlikely Android will be on an upward path for long. However, the fact it has overtaken Apple means it has established a steady base and building customer loyalty could pay dividends in the future.

Away from the world of smartphone manufacturing, the lesson other businesses must learn is that they can no longer afford not to have a mobile web presence of some sort.

With more than 80 million people across the globe having access to such a device, they offer a great way for businesses to interact with existing and potential customers.

Google mobile search trounces Bing in PPC

admin — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 13:33:13 +0000

As everyone knows, Bing has set its sights on Google as it looks to gain a bigger share of the search market. Unfortunately, it appears Microsoft may have taken its eye off the ball when it comes to the bigger picture as its rival has just managed to overtake it in an important emerging sector.

According to data released by Latitude, Google UK mobile search traffic for PPC is growing at an average of 76 per cent a quarter and has just passed the number people who accessed such ads via Bing on their PCs.
It’s not the most exciting fact of all time, but it’s certainly a rather interesting one, not least because Bing’s efforts currently seem to be focused on the more traditional computer-based search.

And it seems like the mobile search market is set to grow, not least because the sector currently accounts for four per cent of PPC volume on Google, while taking up just two per cent of the spend. It seems like value for money.

Then there’s the issue of smartphones, the devices which are driving growth in mobile search. Currently, there are 11 million users of such devices in the UK and that figure seems set to grow. As Apple’s Steve Jobs pointed out this week, non-smartphones currently account for the largest proportion of the mobile market and a significant number of people will convert to the new devices in the coming years.

This means mobile search will keep rising and, through its Android OS, Google already has a significant head start in a market Microsoft is still trying to crack.

Of course, as the two search giants battle it out, other firms would be wise to spend their time ensuring their mobile SEO plans are spot on.

Smarthphone apps v mobile-optimised websites – there’s only one winner

admin — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 11:49:22 +0000

Apps, we are constantly being told, are the way of the future. The theory goes that we’ll soon be using them for everything from turning the house lights on and off to booking flights. Personally, I’m a little sceptical as to what extent they will change people’s habits – they can certainly be very useful, but the majority of them only seem to offer the chance to waste time or show off.

I’m not alone. David Smith, managing director at online retail industry body IMRG, has massive doubts over the impact apps will have on the world of commerce, and his point is one worth bearing in mind.

“I think the future for retail will be more in mobile-enabled web sites rather than apps. As a retailer, you’ll get lost in the sheer amount of apps there are out there and as a consumer, you don’t want to spend your time trawling through those apps, it’s better to surf in the same way that you surf the web using a PC,” he told Computing.

Some may accuse him of being short-sighted, especially those who are obsessed with the death of the internet, but it would be hard to dispute his point. Searching an app store can be a slow process and you’d be highly unlikely to find an appropriate one using the kind of long-tail term you’d put into Google. If you’re a well-known brand, it may be worth investing in an app, but you’re relying on people specifically hunting you out and you’d still be limiting yourself to a certain platform.

Not only will a mobile website let users of all phones to access a brand, but it should also allow firms to be more dynamic by, for example, ensuring the latest special offers are highlighted.

Of course, people still have to find your site, but ensuring they do so should be a lot easier than directing someone to your app. Search engine optimisation, pay-per-click and social media marketing exist to help people find your site, and that applies whether or not you’ve optimised it for mobile web users. Whatever the future holds, getting the basics right will always be vital.

2010 – The Year of Mobile Search?

admin — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 15:10:40 +0000

The true potential of mobile internet usage may not be fully explored in 2010. There is a fierce battle on for which handset will be the must have portable internet device. Apple’s iphone has dominated the market up to now but it now has big competition with the Google Nexus One.

Will search be any different on a mobile phone though? Obviously there will be some small differences in how people use the internet on a mobile device rather than a normal computer, but will there be such a thing as mobile SEO?

Cracking mobile search should be at the top of many companies’ lists. When people can access the internet wherever they are, buying decisions could be influenced by many new factors. People already crave fast answers to questions and having those answers on their mobile device will increase that want still further.

If we look at how technology has progressed over the last decades – and beyond that to an extent – computers have become more powerful, certain elements have become much smaller and everything is faster. Advancements in personal computing technology are probably not what is going to affect change the most though. Super-fast internet access is the key. If people can access the same internet connection speed on their mobile device as they can on their personal computer running from a home/work broadband connection, the possibilities are endless. A uniform connection speed will probably force technology improvements in computing hardware and bring with it the true revolution of online.

Whether such a thing as SEO will exist for mobile is still to be seen. As search engines become more sophisticated, and real-time search improves, it is quite likely that manipulating results will become obsolete to a great extent. However, the search engines still need to make money, so they can’t make changes to algorithms to the level at which is probably possible unless other revenue streams can be secured.