Getting Mobile Wrong Has Real Consequences For Sales, Brand
The idea that there are consequences to poor mobile presence or performance isn’t new. But a very recent survey conducted in September on behalf of Netbiscuits lends more urgency to the sense that marketers and brands must get mobile right or risk lost sales and damaging perceptions of the brand itself. Roughly 6,000 adults from six countries, representing a mix of […]
The idea that there are consequences to poor mobile presence or performance isn’t new. But a very recent survey conducted in September on behalf of Netbiscuits lends more urgency to the sense that marketers and brands must get mobile right or risk lost sales and damaging perceptions of the brand itself.
Roughly 6,000 adults from six countries, representing a mix of new and more mature mobile markets (China, India, Brazil, the US, UK, Germany), responded to a battery of questions about mobile behavior and advertising attitudes. I’m only drilling into a small selection of the data.
Respondents across the board expressed a range of usability related frustrations, from sites being slow to having difficulty entering information and completing tasks. Reported abandonment rates were high from these experiences and especially high in younger age categories.
In many instances when users experienced these problems they turned to competitor mobile sites. In the aggregate 91 percent said that after experiencing problems they had turned to a competitor’s mobile site to compete a desired task. Below is a chart that shows the inclination to switch to competitive site by country.
Nearly all of the Chinese respondents said that when they encountered mobile website problems then turned to a competitor. Americans were less likely to do this and Germans were the least likely. These figures can be seen as proxies for brand loyalty to a degree.
By the same token good mobile experiences were almost equally likely to lead to positive recommendations and word of mouth. According to the report’s findings, “80 percent of respondents identified that they have recommended a brand based on the mobile web experience; 29 percent said that they do this often or very often.”
There are many more findings on privacy, personalization, wearables and augmented reality. However the big takeaway (once again) is that mobile can’t be an afterthought. Increasingly it’s the primary way for consumers to access the web, especially in developing markets. This is also true for Millennials in particular.
The message is: get mobile right or get passed over.
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