Google recent­ly intro­duced a new search algo­rithm that favors mobile-friend­ly web­sites. Giv­en this change, mar­keters are focused on best prac­tices relat­ed to ana­lyt­ics and how they can help to ensure that their web­sites are mobile ready.

Here’s an impor­tant ques­tion: Does your company’s web­site adhere to Google’s lat­est algo­rithm change, which gives rank­ing promi­nence to mobile-friend­ly web­sites? You can check it here: Mobile-Friend­ly Test.  If not, it’s time that you do.

This lat­est update from Google may seem frus­trat­ing to some mar­keters, but it’s an impor­tant one giv­en that mobile web vis­its con­tin­ue to increase. In fact, mobile plat­forms (smart­phones or tablets) account for 60 per­cent of total dig­i­tal media time spent.

So whether you’re con­cerned with Google rank­ings or not (though, aren’t we all?), you must take the time to ensure your web­site is mobile-user friend­ly and ulti­mate­ly achiev­ing your busi­ness goals – whether that’s increas­ing sales, build­ing brand aware­ness, or dri­ving down­loads.

With the help of Google Ana­lyt­ics, you can gain a bet­ter under­stand­ing of how mobile vis­i­tors are find­ing your site, what their goals are, and what con­tent they’re engag­ing with. You can then uti­lize this infor­ma­tion to make tweaks to your site that will improve its user expe­ri­ence (UX) and even­tu­al­ly lead to more con­ver­sions.

Overview Of Mobile Engagement

Before mak­ing any updates to your site, you want to get a bet­ter under­stand­ing of how mobile vis­i­tors are engag­ing with the web­site. The Mobile Overview report in Google Ana­lyt­ics will give you an idea of mobile users’ activ­i­ty on your site. Also with­in this report, you can uti­lize the “Plot Rows” options to high­light how mobile and tablet traf­fic have changed over time vs. desk­top.

With a broad under­stand­ing of how mobile vis­i­tors are engag­ing with your web­site, you can then dig deep­er if you notice any red flags. For exam­ple, if any page has a high Bounce Rate per­cent­age, then you should try to dis­cov­er why peo­ple are leav­ing from that page:

• Is it not load­ing fast enough on mobile?
• Is the text too small to read on a phone?
• Is it too much con­tent to read on the go?

In the exam­ple below, you can see that mobile traf­fic shows the high­est Bounce Rate, short­est Aver­age Ses­sion Dura­tion, and low­est Con­ver­sion Rate. These sta­tis­tics should prompt a detailed assess­ment of how the site appears and per­forms on a mobile device.

Acquisition Of Mobile Traffic

In order to help you under­stand where mobile vis­i­tors are com­ing from, Google Ana­lyt­ics offers the Chan­nels report (Audi­ence > All Traf­fic . Chan­nels). Using this report you can apply the “Mobile Traf­fic” seg­ment and study whether mobile users are find­ing you through email, social, organ­ic search, etc.

For exam­ple, the report below shows that dis­play dri­ves the most mobile traf­fic, fol­lowed by organ­ic search, direct, and paid search. We also see that organ­ic search shows the low­est bounce rate and most pages per ses­sion, with these vis­i­tors more like­ly to browse through the site beyond the first point of con­tact. In this case, you may want to devel­op a mar­ket­ing approach that bal­ances dis­play and organ­ic Search to main­tain the vol­ume of mobile traf­fic, while shift­ing the mix to the more-engaged organ­ic search vis­i­tors.

You can dig deep­er into the data by click­ing on a par­tic­u­lar chan­nel (e.g., social). This will show you what spe­cif­ic social net­works are bring­ing the most vis­i­tors to your mobile site. With this infor­ma­tion you can then strate­gi­cal­ly alter­nate any mar­ket­ing efforts to tar­get the net­works that are dri­ving qual­i­ty traf­fic.

For exam­ple, below you can see that Face­book, by far, dri­ves the most vis­i­tors via mobile. How­ev­er, you can also see that Pin­ter­est gen­er­ates a much high­er per­cent­age of new ses­sions, show­ing its val­ue in bring­ing in peo­ple oth­er­wise unfa­mil­iar with the site.

Behavior Of Mobile Traffic

As you like­ly vis­it sites on mobile on a dai­ly basis your­self, think about what frus­trates you most about these plat­forms.

• Is it the load time?
• Is it inac­tive but­tons or links?
• Maybe it’s too-per­sis­tent pop-up ads?

What­ev­er it is, these annoy­ances may also be both­er­ing the users of your brand’s web­site.

To get a bet­ter under­stand­ing of what your mobile users’ annoy­ances might be, and where they are drop­ping off your web­site, review the Behav­ior Flow report in Google Ana­lyt­ics with the “Mobile Traf­fic” seg­ment applied. This report shows how traf­fic flows through a site.

Read­ing the exam­ple below from left to right, you can see that mobile vis­i­tors are most like­ly to enter the site via blog posts (inter­est­ing, as the home page is the top land­ing page for desk­top), mov­ing on to view the Recipes sec­tion or oth­er blog posts.

In order to keep these vis­i­tors engaged beyond the first blog post, you may want to take a look at your blog to eval­u­ate ways to keep them on the web­site. Per­haps that includes adding a “sug­gest­ed posts” sec­tion, includ­ing ban­ner ads to your home page, pro­vid­ing a newslet­ter signup – some­thing that makes sense for your web­site that will encour­age fur­ther engage­ment.

Conclusion

By 2017, the num­ber of smart­phone users in the U.S. is expect­ed to sur­pass 200 mil­lion, near­ly 65 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion. Although the imme­di­ate need for your mobile site may be to adhere to Google’s new search rank­ing stan­dards, you should also invest in improv­ing the over­all appeal to mobile users.

The var­i­ous Google Ana­lyt­ics reports dis­cussed here offer a good start­ing point to bet­ter under­stand your mobile traf­fic and iden­ti­fy site weak­ness­es. With reg­u­lar check-ins and reports, you can con­sis­tent­ly update and improve the UX for your mobile traf­fic, which will ulti­mate­ly lead to more engage­ment and con­ver­sions.

What mobile met­rics do you find most valu­able?