Whether your target guests are young or retired, married or single, smartphones are their constant companions.
The soaring popularity of smartphones across all demographics resulted in mobile searches overtaking those made on desktop for the first time last year, causing Google to include mobile friendliness as part of its ranking algorithm. The search company knows more of its users are mobile than ever before, and are invested in rewarding websites that offer the best possible user experience for searchers on small screen devices.
Scoring ranking points with Google isn’t the only reason you need to make sure your hotel’s website operates perfectly across all devices, though. Just like Google, you should make mobile friendliness your priority simply because it’s what your guests want - no expect - when they land on your website ready to book.
So, what kind of experience are you providing for guests researching their breaks from a smartphone? By now, you have probably incorporated responsive design to ensure functionality across mobile, tablet and desktop, but is your content actually optimised for mobile? Here are 3 areas to check:
Mobile Friendly Video Content
Cracking video is central to succeeding at content marketing, and digital marketing as a whole. No matter how much care, creativity and planning you’ve put into your visual content, if you want to make sure your videos catch and hold the attention of your guests, you need to make the mobile user experience a pleasant one:
- Opt for automatic optimization. Make life easy for yourself – don’t play about with bitrates and compression by yourself. Opt for a third party platform like YouTube or Vimeo and take advantage of automatic tech optimisation to ensure a seamless user experience. If you really want to play host to your own video content, Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming is a good option.
- Ensure text is big enough. Although smartphone screens have been getting bigger and bigger, they’re still pretty small. Save your guests’ eyes and keep your text large and easily readable.
- Consider your video without sound. Did you know the majority of video on Facebook is played without sound? Many of your guests are viewing your content in the office, where listening may be difficult (or they’re pretending to work). Check out your video with the mute button on – are the visuals enticing enough to sustain engagement with no sound?
Mobile Friendly Images
Since load times are one of the key factors that determine if a guest will stay on your website or bounce, it’s vital to get your content in front of them fast. Captivating images are also one of the best ways to ensure visitors stay onsite, which makes creating great looking images which load fast doubly important to your hotel’s mobile friendly strategy.
- Ensure your images have a pre-optimized format. Tools like Canva are useful for creating images the right size and resolution for the different social media platforms as well as email.
- Use responsive resizing. Ask a web developer about creating images which resize responsively to fit the screen of the user.
Mobile Friendly Text Content
People do read text content from their mobile devices, but only if it’s short, to the point and easy to digest.
- Think snack size. We’re talking concise sentences and small paragraphs, broken up by engaging video and photos or at least plenty of white space.
- Use headers effectively. Headers and subtitles help readers understand the gist of your content at a glance.
- Revisit the most important points in your final paragraph. Readers short on time may simply swipe to the conclusion of your blog article to see your final thoughts. Make sure the most pertinent points and a compelling call to action is waiting for them.
Is your hotel putting your best face forward when it comes to guests viewing your content on mobile devices? Let us know in the comments below!
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- 3 Steps To Get Your Resort Mobile-Ready
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- 3 Steps to Creating a Perfect Mobile Experience For Your Guests
