The Quest for Awesome Mobile Landing Pages

by Scott Brinker@chiefmartec

Responsive design is wonderful.

Responsive design is wonderful.

But are mobile native landing pages better in some cases?

Heresy!

Responsive web design is great when wedon’t know if the respondent is mobile.

But what about scenarios where we do know the user is mobile?

For instance, when they click on a mobile ad

http://services.google.com/fh/files/blogs/our_mobile_planet_us_en.pdf

But why should we craftmobile-specific pages for them?

So we know that the user is on a mobile device.

Why do we do landing pages?

Why do we do landing pages?

To give visitors exactly what they want in context.

Why responsive design landing pages aren’t necessarily best in a mobile context:

• Large assets loaded behind the scenes

• (In)visible content hard to conceptualize

• Different copy may be preferred

• Different CTAs may be preferred

• Conditional code complicated to manage

Mobile users are a different segment than desktop users.

If you’re not optimizing mobile and desktop/tablet users independently, you’re almost certainly confounding your test results.

Advantages of native mobile landing pages:

• Super lightweight pages for speed

• Targeted copy and CTAs

• Thumb-friendly interface

• Mobile-specific features (geolocation)

• WYSIWYG design of user experience

• Independent testing of mobile segment

Taps, vertical scrolling, click-to-call, swipes, and app installs are easy.

Pinch/zoom, horizontal scrolling, and forms aren’t.

Marketing > Content

Heresy!

Marketing > ContentGood content is important — but there ismore to marketing than good content.

Marketing is not (just) publishing.

Put another way: don’t forget the marketing in content marketing.

Good: mobile website.

Better: targeted mobile landing pages for specific high-value searches.

Serves: e-commerce optimization, store location, and brand building.

“Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm?”

“Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm?”

Um, yes.

http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/

What’s weighing your pages down? ?

Yoda was wicked fast.

But won’t 4G make all these speed concerns irrelevant?

http://www.gomez.com/wp-content/downloads/19986_WhatMobileUsersWant_Wp.pdf

http://www.gomez.com/wp-content/downloads/19986_WhatMobileUsersWant_Wp.pdf

Mobile landing pages can be small and fast… but still make a visceral impact.

Even interactive content such as a — gasp! — rotator can be mobilized. *

* (Super lightweight and without Flash, of course.)

What’s the best way to determine location?

HTML5 Geolocation IP Geolocation

+ Highly accurate

+ Privacy polite

– Prompt required

+ No prompting

– Not very accurate

– Can be spooky

Mitigate downside by using cookies, delayed interaction, and explicit geo-feature actions.

Mitigate downsides by using as “default” in location form fields in less accurate settings.

IP geolocation accurate to within 25 miles but only 81% of the time in the U.S.

Why accurate geo-location matters.

http://services.google.com/fh/files/blogs/our_mobile_planet_us_en.pdf

http://services.google.com/fh/files/blogs/our_mobile_planet_us_en.pdf

http://services.google.com/fh/files/blogs/our_mobile_planet_us_en.pdf

You should test more thanmobile vs. non-mobile segments.

A/B test mobile-specific ideas.

Source: Marketing Leadership Council of Corporate Executive Board 2012

Constraints inspire creativity.