• by Karl Greenberg , Staff Writer, June 7, 2011

Kari Wilson Product Marketing Manager, Google Mobile Ads and Sebastien Chalmeton: Vice President, Mobile Strategy, Phonevalley said advertisers without mobile sites might as well be closed one day per week.    Wilson said 30% for consumer electronics are via mobile phone. Fifteen percent of finance seeking is from mobile and over 15% of insurance queries. "We did a study where we looked at top 1,000 advertisers and found 79% didn't have mobile optimized sites.

She said it's bad for business because 60% of consumers who have a bad mobile experience wont go back to that site, 40% will go to a competitor's site and 19% will have a negative perception of that brand.

Chalmeton said there are five keys to creating mobilized sites:

Keep the layout simple. "It is the most critical thing you need to do when you design a mobile site," said Chalmeton, whose company designed Cadillac's web-optimization. "For cadillac we tried to eliminate clutter as much as possible. You can view content at arms length and that's a rule of thumb." Also, he said, advertisers should make sure their mobile sites are focused on one piece of content at a time. "The consumer is on the go so you can't do one minute videos, 30 seconds is about right, because mobile sites are still slow." Wilson said another simplification that aligns with behavior is making search easy and prominent. "For a lot of consumers search is what they do with smart phones."

Prioritize content. "Think of the top five things mobile consumers will do on the go.

Build for a mobile in-store experience. (though I could be wrong about this one)

Design for thumbs not mice, for example build for scrolling in in one direction.

Make it easy to convert on the go. shorten the conversion process. And have a call to action that is clear and obvious. "we found consumers are spending about four minutes on mobile.