Mobile Web Content Optimization with Eric Hansen

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Are you responsible for mobile website conversions and user engagement at your company? If so, Eric Hansen of SiteSpect has a few ideas to share with you. The company helps marketers test and optimize their web sites, detect important mobile device capabilities and discover how content affects user behavior and profitability.

In his second podcast interview with me, Eric discusses mobile Web content optimization at Vegas.com, the largest city destination travel website in the world.

Vegas.com discovered that 7% of all website traffic arrives from mobile users and is growing rapidly. When management checked conversion rates, mobile users significantly underperformed desktop Internet visitors.

So the company began testing different content for mobile users that would reveal user satisfaction, make the site stickier and boost conversions.

Working with SiteSpect, Vegas.com did a controlled A/B test, measuring a variety of metrics and determined the best-performing Web content across multiple mobile handsets.

Results of the web content optimization test revealed the following:

22% reduction in bounce rate
16% increase in page views
14% increase in hotel searches
Double-digit lift in conversion rate.

The results impressed management and led to further mobile Web content tests of iPhone and Android devices, the primary operating systems used by site visitors. SiteSpect and company management next delivered a desktop-oriented site to half the smartphone users and a mobilized version to the other half.

As expected, smartphone users who viewed the mobilized website converted consistently better than the desktop site. Vegas.com plans to test other factors affecting its e-commerce performance in the future.

Mobile Web Content Optimization Analytics

As I mentioned to Eric in our interview, over 9% of MobileBeyond’s audience now arrives via mobile phones, up from 6% two months ago, from a variety of sites. (I haven’t measured IM-Mobile traffic yet.) Google and Yahoo organic search delivers around 60% of all visitors. But a significant portion of the MobileBeyond audience comes from Facebook, LinkedIn and other direct sources.

In response, I’ve made several changes to my mobile Web content that improves visibility to mobile users. Optimizing my blog for smartphone users and offering a .mobi site also improve the readability of blog pages on most handset browsers. Since flash elements, like the MP3 player at the top of this post, don’t show on iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and other platforms, I added an audio text link beneath the player. And, like other bloggers I continue testing different content .

What about mobile Web content optimization at your company? For answers, listen to the podcast interview with Eric Hansen of SiteSpect.