• by Jim Yu , June 22, 2015

Within the past year, consumers’ mobile interaction with retail companies has grown in a big way. According to KissMetrics, consumers spend more time shopping on mobile devices than desktops and 78% of mobile searches for business information result in a local purchase.

A massive opportunity exists for mobile retailers to engage customers and drive revenue with content, but many are still missing the mobile mark.

This year, high quality content on mobile is more crucial than ever. As Google’s latest announcement demonstrates, search engines are tightening quality standards, consumers have higher mobile expectations, and the sheer volume of digital content competing for customers’ attention is larger than ever before.

Instead of getting stuck in a cycle of guesswork, modern mobile marketers must have a laser focus on optimizing the mobile experience and understanding demand at an in-depth level. Only then will they see consistently impactful mobile content.

First, fix what’s wrong.

According to the 2014 Mobile Share Report, more than one in four mobile sites — 27 percent — are misconfigured in some way. Because of common errors, mobile marketers are losing out on nearly 70 percent of traffic and dropping an average of two spots in search results. Marketers can no longer rely on having a strong desktop site to make up for mistakes on mobile.

“But wait,” you might be thinking. “I’m a retail company — we have an app!” That’s all well and good, but the fact is, two out of three consumers still prefer using mobile sites to browse or make purchases instead of apps. KissMetrics’ findings show that most retail customers find downloading and accessing a separate mobile app to be an unnecessary extra step.

The bottom line is, don’t cut corners when it comes to mobile optimization. Go through your site with a fine-toothed comb and rectify any configuration or implementation errors. Consumers want a fully functioning site, so this is the first step toward meeting that demand.

Dig deep into demand.

Now that you’ve got your site in shape, it’s time to get into the nitty-gritty of mobile demand. Mobile is all about meeting your customers where they are. This means to first understand the basics: why are mobile users coming to your site.

Retail desktop visitors are primarily there to make purchases and view products, whereas mobile users are looking for information like location and store hours the majority of the time. Use measurement tools to understand exactly what users are looking for and interacting with on each page of your site. Then, tailor your mobile site to fit that page-by-page breakdown.

“One-size-fits-all” no longer works for most mobile marketers. Instead, a responsive design might work best for the less trafficked pages, whereas dynamic works better for the more important mobile pages on your site. Mixing and matching strategies — and constantly keeping a finger on the pulse of demand — can have a major impact on your mobile content performance.

Get sticky.

The next step is to create “sticky” content for your site, as in, whatever content keeps mobile users there longer. For example, rich media like videos perform particularly well on mobile devices. For some retailers, that might be short “How-To” videos and for others, an interactive photo gallery. Measure what works and produce more of it.

For retailers with brick and mortar stores, more and more brands are tackling the challenge of creating unique mobile sites for each of their locations. This is a huge undertaking, but not impossible. It can also have a massive effect on traffic and overall customer experience.

For example, customers accessing your mobile site from Los Angeles don’t need to be inundated with information about winter clothes or snow tires as soon as they enter your site. If you understand demand at a local level, you can create much “stickier” content.