By Jim Hennessey
Is your website content or online event registration process optimized for mobile devices? If you’re not sure, the answer is probably no.
Consumers spend an average of five hours each day on their smartphones. In the last six months, over 62% of smartphone users purchased something online with their mobile devices. Last month, 79% of users accessing the websites of our Event 360 clients were doing so via a mobile device.
The increase in mobile users comes with some challenges, especially for fundraising and event registration efforts. Mobile users spend less than half the amount of time on a website than those who access a site from a desktop. Mobile users also expect that all the key information they need will be on one page of the site, and typically won’t access sub-pages. This results in above-average bounce rates for your site.
With this behavior in mind, your website’s content or registration process must be accessible everywhere—across multiple device types, platforms and channels.
Here are three essential content strategies that can help your website succeed in this mobile-first world:
- Be There. You need to determine when your consumers will need to access your content and make sure you are there when those moments occur. There are three key moments to “be there” for your event participants and your website visitors.
- I want-to-know moments: Consumers are exploring or researching but are not yet ready to donate or register for your event. They want useful information and maybe even inspiration, but not the hard sell.
- I want-to-do moments: These may come before or after consumers donate or register. Either way, these are “how to” moments when people want help getting things done or trying something new. The process should be simple and easy to follow for all site visitors.
- I want-to-buy/donate moments: Consumers are ready to donate or register and may need help deciding what to do or how to do it. Don’t assume they’ll scroll through various menus to find where to donate. Make sure the information is quickly accessible and easy to find.
- Be Useful. You have to be relevant to your consumers’ needs and connect them with the answers they’re looking for, especially about your organization or event.
- Only 9% of visitors will stay on a mobile site if it doesn’t satisfy their needs. This means easy-to-find information or the ability to navigate quickly are key.
- Help users fill in forms during the registration process. Pre-populate data where possible and provide easy-to-use menus with selection options.
- Put the big stuff first. This includes calls-to-action for the major activities on your site.
- Be Quick. Mobile users want to know, go, and buy swiftly. Your mobile experience needs to be fast and frictionless. Being quick means knowing what your consumers want before they want it.
- Mobile users are 40% less likely to come back to a website if the pages are formatted for desktop. This includes small type and the need to scroll or zoom in or out to read the content.
- To speed the consumer along, you should use one-click functionality or social log-in to streamline the registration and donation processes.
- Mobile users will typically wait no more than 3 seconds for a page to load. Make sure your site and registration process are quick and load as fast as lightning.
So remember these three essential strategies when optimizing your website content or online event registration process for mobile devices: Be There, Be Useful and Be Quick for your site visitors. The success of your event registration and fundraising depends on it!
Jim Hennessey (LinkedIn, Twitter) is the Director, Consumer Marketing at Event 360. He leads the marketing and social media strategy for MuckFest® MS and works with other organizations including Bike MS, the Florida AIDS Walk & Music Festival, and the MMRF Team for Cures 5K with digital marketing and social media strategies to support their peer to peer events and fundraising. Jim lives in Chicago.
