In 2015, mobile traffic surpassed desktop traffic for the first time. Since then, it’s continued to skyrocket. Now, more than 85% of internet users are mobile.
With such an increase in mobile internet usage, today’s advertisers are pivoting more toward mobile ads. In 2019, mobile advertising spending surpassed $200 billion. By 2023, it is expected to exceed $400 billion, representing more than 80% of global digital ad spend.
Yet, there’s a problem: A huge portion of mobile ad spend is being wasted because advertisers don’t prioritize personalized post-click experiences on mobile.
The Problem with Most Mobile Ad Clicks
Advancements in advertising targeting technology allow advertisers to serve highly personalized ads to audiences based on criteria like demographics and online behavior. This helps maximize ad clicks, which of course is essential, but, it’s not enough.
Conversions are where revenue comes from—but the average mobile conversion rate across Google Ads is only 3.48% on the search network and 0.72% on the display network:
This means a huge majority of mobile ad clicks and budget are wasted—primarily because advertisers focus on creating mobile-optimized ads and neglect connecting them to personalized post-click experiences. Without a focus on both the pre- and post-click stages of advertising conversion, it’s difficult to convert audiences.
What is the Difference Between Mobile Responsiveness, Optimization, and Personalization?
Although responsive design, optimization, and personalization are all necessary for an exceptional user experience on mobile, they all play different roles and serve different purposes.
Responsive Design
This most basic tactic includes reformatting and restructuring pages for compatibility on any device regardless of screen size. Mobile-responsive pages scale across small screens (mobile, tablets, etc.) to larger screens (standard desktop screen sizes, larger widescreen monitors, etc.)
Optimization
Mobile-optimized pages are designed specifically for mobile users, created carefully by collecting data and testing elements to see what’s helping or hurting conversions.
Personalization
This is the last step toward providing a great mobile user experience. It involves collecting and using information to segment audiences, and then creating unique post-click pages designed for those particular audiences.
While post-click experiences must be responsive and optimized for ad clicks to result in conversions, personalization is what generates the best user engagement and the most conversions.
Why do Mobile Ads Need Personalized Post-click Experiences?
The post-click stage is where the conversion happens, making it key to the success of any campaign. As part of the post-click experience, your landing page is designed as a natural extension of the ad that was clicked, and is specifically designed for the audience segment targeted.
For mobile, this means each page element notifies the visitor they’ve landed in the right place to redeem the offer they learned about in the ad. Each page element should also be optimized for a great mobile experience, intended to drive targeted traffic to a specific conversion by focusing on a single message, maintaining a conversion ratio of 1:1.
Here are two contrasting examples. First, a BarkBox ad that sends prospects to a traditional homepage:
In contrast, a Birchbox ad that directs people to a personalized post-click experience:
The second example provides a better mobile user experience, primarily because the post-click page is short and highly conversion-focused with only one conversion goal and no exit links.
The click-through format also removes friction by introducing visitors to the offer before requesting their information. They’re not faced with any questions until they click through to the next sequence of pages where they can take a personalized quiz and submit their contact information when they’re finished:
All that said, here are additional ways to make sure your mobile page elements are optimized for a positive user experience.
How to Optimize Mobile Page Elements for a Better User Experience
Faster Load Times
Although not necessarily a page element, fast page load time is vital for an optimized and personalized mobile post-click experience because it is one of the main contributors of bounce rate. In fact, as page load time increases from one second to 10 seconds, bounce rate increases by 123%.
This is also the first on the list because, while slow page load speeds cause friction and abandonment, fast mobile experiences can result in higher conversion rates and more revenue.
The best way to ensure fast loading pages is with AMP. AMP landing pages enable a user to click an ad built with AMP HTML and be immediately directed to an AMP-constructed post-click landing page. This eliminates the usual click, tracking redirect, post-click landing page redirect, loading process, shortening it to only two steps—click and load:
Click to Call Buttons
If prospects have immediate questions about your offer, including a click-to-call button on your page helps reduce conversion friction, which could occur from having to complete a contact form instead.
Since visitors are already on their mobile devices, simply tapping the click-to-call phone number in the top corner of the page, which is sticky and follows users as they scroll, opens the call app in their mobile device:
This way, users can get in touch with the brand immediately, providing a more positive user experience.
Sticky CTA Buttons
Sticky CTA buttons stay with the visitor as they scroll the page, making it easy for them to sign up quickly at any point during their visit without having to search for the button again:
Sticky CTAs can be placed in the header or footer of the page.
Concise, Readable Copy
Since mobile screens are considerably smaller than desktop screens, readability can be an issue with mobile pages. It’s important to convey only what’s needed to drive the conversion. Otherwise, you might overwhelm the visitor with too much text.
It’s recommended that you use the following font sizes for particular elements:
- Main headline: 28 pixels
- Subheadline: 22 pixels
- Paragraphs: 17 pixels
- Other details: 15 pixels
Line height with text elements should also be considered for mobile post-click landing pages. Aim for at least 1.4. As a rule of thumb: the smaller the font size, the bigger the line height.
Shorter Forms
Again, since the screen is smaller on mobile devices, lead capture forms should be shorter. These are used to collect vital user information and confirm the conversion, so making it as easy as possible for prospects to complete is critical. That means only including necessary form fields.
If your offer calls for more information, multi-step forms can come in handy. These break up longer forms into smaller sections, so they are much easier to fill out on a smaller screen.
Connect Every Mobile Ad to a Personalized Post-click Experience
Don’t let your mobile advertising budget go to waste. Each ad requires its own personalized post-click page to create a consistent campaign narrative. Be sure to create optimized, relevant, and personalized post-click pages for every target audience to maximize your ROAS.
Stephanie Mialki is a Content Writer for Instapage. She is a graduate of St. Bonaventure University with a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Mass Communication.