Are You Maximising Your Results On Mobile?

Reading Time: 5 minutes

This blog will introduce the ways you can maximise your results on mobile. The focus will be predominantly on PPC although some suggestions will be equally applicable to SEO.

1. Why should you bother with boosting results on mobile?

Rise in phone use

• In 2016, four out of five adults used smartphones
• A third of adults regularly use their devices while with friends or watching television
• Half of 18 to 34-year-olds and a third of adults check their phone in the middle of the night, with instant messaging and social media being the most popular activities (BBC News,2016).

Increased shopping habits on mobile

• In 2016, for the first time, hand-held devices overtook traditional computers or laptops for online sales (Telegraph, 2016).
• During November 2015 – January 2016, 66% of visits to retail websites came through mobile.

2. Do you need to use different Ads for mobile?

• By default your ads will show on Computer, Tablet and Mobile – so you don’t need to have unique ads for mobile

Call Only Ads

• However, there is a huge opportunity on mobile – for creating “Call Only Ads”
  • As the name suggests, when “Call Only Ads” are clicked, they do not take you through to the website, but instead, call the business at the click of a button
  • This is a fantastic opportunity for high-value products or services – where purchases are not made instantaneously, but instead, the customer requires persuading that your product is the best fit for them. For this reason call, only ads are especially useful for b2b services.
• Call Only ads contain less text than regular ads – so it can be a challenge to convey the information you want, especially if you are used to expanded text ads. However, it is still important to include a call to action (i.e. phone us) and a unique selling point.
• Call Only Ads are available on all devices that can make calls, however, they perform best on mobile – so we suggest reducing or turning off your bids for computer and tablet.

What is the difference between Call Only Ads and Call Extensions?

• If you add a call extension to your regular ads –it will just appear as a number at the side of your advert.
• The extension will be clickable – so in a similar way to the Call Only ads, you can call directly from the ad.
• Using the extension allows you to include more text than a Call Only Ad
• However, the phone number extension will not show every time.:
  • If you have other extensions such as site links or callouts, these may show instead
  • Depending on your ad’s position on the page – it’s possible for no extensions to show at all.

Should you use call only Ads or call extensions?

• We would recommend using both Call extensions on all devices and using Call Only Ads just on mobile.
  • The call extension increases click through rates (typically by 6-8%)
• If your goal is to drive phone calls, we would recommend using higher bidding on keywords triggering Call Only Ads.

3. Should I use different AdWords settings for mobile?

Can I use different bids for mobile?

• Yes! In the Campaigns settings tab in you can adjust bids on mobile, computer and tablet. Adjustments are made by percentage. E.g. if you are bidding a CPC of £1 for a certain keyword, by increasing the mobile bid by 20% will change your Max CPC bid to £1.20
• You can also set up campaigns where you are only bidding on mobile (by decreasing the bids on Computer and tablet by 100%), which allows you to tailor all your settings to a mobile specific campaign.

Should I use higher bids for mobile?

• Not necessarily. The bids you should use will depend on you what product or service you are selling – and above all the results you are getting.
• Imagine you own a Curry house restaurant that also provides a takeaway delivery service.
  • For advertising the takeaway business, you will want to consider increasing your bids on computer relative to mobile. People will generally order a take way from home, where they are more likely to use a desktop or laptop.
• For the restaurant – you may want to increase your bids for mobile, to capture the people who are “out and about”.

Is it important to use location adjustments on mobile campaigns?

• Yes! Four out of five consumers use search engines to find products, services or experiences nearby.
• With the rise of mobile, people are no longer searching from one static location – which increases the potential impact of local search.
  • g. a high bid on mobile for “best coffee shop near me” in a 5-mile radius around your shop – is likely to see much better results than the same tactic on a computer, as the number of potential new customers is so much greater.

Should I adjust bids based on time settings for mobile?

• Yes! A general rule is that– computer and tablet use peaks during the evening hours. Mobile is spread more evenly throughout the day.
• However, the effectiveness of different times of day for different devices – will depend on your industry.
  • The best way of choosing bid adjustments is in response to your data. You can analyse the effectiveness of different times and different devices through using the “dimensions” tab in Adwords and adjust accordingly.
• To adjust time settings – you will need to create a time schedule in Adwords (under settings). It is possible to split every day into segments (we recommend six segments of four hours each)
• Using the example of the curry house – you may want to increase the bids for the restaurant between 6 – 9 pm and increase bids more on Friday and Saturday evenings, as these will be the peak times people are looking to eat out.

4. Should I change my landing page for mobile campaigns?

   (Also applicable to SEO).

• This is a very important, often overlooked issue: driving traffic to your landing page is very important, however, if the experience is poor on mobile, this will lead to people leaving your site and a wasted budget.
• This free tool is a great starting point to estimate how mobile friendly your website is.
• The effectiveness of your mobile experience can also be measured by your bounce rate – i.e. the number of people who only view one page on your website before clicking away. (This can easily be identified in Google Analytics)

What characteristics will a mobile friendly site have?

• A mobile friendly site will be easy to read and straightforward to navigate
• If your goal is to increase conversions (which is usually the most important consideration for a PPC campaign) you should have a clear “Call to Action” at the top of the page. The call to action might be (for example) a form for the visitor to fill in, or a number for them to ring.
  • The Call to Action needs to be one of the first things that the visitor sees – it should make it as easy as possible to complete the conversion action
  • Where appropriate your site should include a phone number which is “clickable”
• A fast page speed is also crucial – if the page does not load within a few seconds, the visitor is very likely to click away.
• Designed for the fat finger! Make sure buttons are not too small or likely to be pressed by accident by someone scrolling

(For more information on mobile optimisation, click here).

Final thoughts….

• Don’t neglect computer or tablet. We have found although there is increasing traffic on mobile – people are still more likely to purchase on a computer.
• Having said this, the buyer’s journey will often start on mobile, and conversion rates on mobile are improving.
• Mobile is continuing to grow in importance, although we might not yet be in a “mobile first” world yet – we are heading that way.

As this blog has mentioned, some marketing tactics and strategies work both organically and paid. If you want to know more about whether you should implement an Organic SEO or a Paid Search Campaign, download our free eBook on Organic vs Paid Search.