People are using their mobile phones to consume more media than ever. ComScore reports that 80 per cent of social media time is spent on a mobile device, while Salesforce data indicates that 71 per cent of marketers believe mobile marketing is core to their business.

The list of statistics indicating that mobile is the future goes on forever. Despite communication professionals being fully aware of this trend, there is a surprisingly large quantity of marketing content out there that isn’t mobile-friendly, and it’s losing companies’ money.

In fact, 89 per cent of email marketers are losing leads because they don’t optimise their emails for mobile, according to Hubspot. 

If communication professionals are to truly embrace the future, they must begin making their content mobile-friendly. Here’s how:

1) Make your content shorter

Optimising your content for mobile is all about putting yourself in your customers’ shoes. Think about the circumstances in which they might be consuming media through their phone. They might be on the bus with just a few minutes to spare, or they might be watching the TV at the same time and therefore will be giving their phone only part of their attention. Consider also how much more effort it takes to scroll down on a mobile phone compared to on a computer.

This means the content you create for mobile must be short, snappy and attention-grabbing. Place all the important information and exciting design elements towards the top, and keep headings and titles short so that they fit on the width of a phone screen. Ensure all the writing and pictures stay in just one column so that your customers don’t have to scroll left and right as well up and down. 

2) Increase the size of touch region controls

Think about how much bigger your finger is than the cursor of a mouse. This means anything that requires user input on your content, for example a link, button or picture, must be large enough that the tip of a finger can accurately click it. 

Apple, for example, recommends its iOS developers make nothing smaller than 44 pixels by 44 pixels, which is the minimum size for a touch region control. Ensure you place each element that needs user input sufficiently far from any other element, so that the consumer isn’t in danger of clicking the wrong thing.

3) Make images smaller

Conversions are reduced by 7 per cent for every one second delay in loading, Kissmetrics reports. Large pictures are often the main culprit in causing long loading times, but you don’t want to take them out of your content altogether because they tend to be what draws your audience’s attention in best. 

The easy solution is to reduce the file sizes of your images – there are many apps such as TinyJPG which can do this for you. You should also ensure you or your developers ensure that images are defined by proportion of the screen so that they automatically fit to screen, rather than by pixels. 

Every day communication is changing, and it’s easy to fall behind. Making your marketing content mobile-friendly is just one of many tactics communication professionals can use to stay relevant. For more, visit our Insights page.