I recently moved into a new apartment and decided it was time for some new furniture. My interior decorating style has always been unique – you can always find furniture around my home that stands out. Excited to brighten up my new place, I picked up my iPhone and started browsing furniture designers in South Florida. One store in particular from my Google search caught my eye, and I clicked their website link to see a complete inventory.
What I thought would be an exciting next five minutes of flipping through custom images and comparing prices to match the perfect living room set with my freshly painted walls turned into five minutes of enlarging the website on my screen, clicking broken links, shrinking the website on my screen, turning my phone horizontal and vertical in hopes of fitting the website on my screen, getting lost in the outdated navigation tabs – you get the idea. The website was not mobile-friendly and did not cater to user experience, and as a result, I put my phone down and decided to search for furniture at another time. On top of that, when I do start searching again, I know for sure that store won’t be on my list.
They had me. An eager buyer who knows what he’s looking for and was ready to purchase immediately – and they let me go. That furniture store put gas in their boat, went to sea, cast their fishing poles, snagged a catch and right before they were about to pull me up out of the water they cut the line – that fish (myself in this case) will swim away to eat elsewhere.
It seems logical to have a mobile-friendly website, especially for an e-commerce business, yet I come across great companies who don’t optimize for mobile users all the time. This is not a new trend, it’s an aspect of marketing that some companies sweep under the rug because business is not hurting. Anyone who stays up-to-date on the marketing industry has heard this before. What these business owners are missing out on are the potential consumers being driven away because viewing their website on a mobile device is like trying to solve a Rubik’s cube. I don’t want a headache; I did want a new couch.
If you own a business or work for a company with a mobile site – take a look at it. Browse through it with the mind of a potential consumer; is it easy to navigate through? Are the steps to checkout or sign up easy and swift? Does it adapt to my screen size for optimal visibility? Would any features turn me away if I wanted to purchase an item? We cater to our customers and clients, always attempting to give them the best experience possible – why should your mobile website be any different?
