Mobile web visitors are an important segment of your nonprofit website users. I reviewed the web analytics for seven nonprofit sites. Here’s what the analytics said.
There are more and more people viewing your nonprofit’s website via a mobile device.
Mobile visits range from 4% – 18% of overall visits. This percentage is predicted to keep rising.
Mobile visitors want relevant information and they want it quickly.
Compared to laptop/desktop visitors, mobile visitors:
- are more likely to leave your site after viewing one page,
- spend less time on the site than other visitors and
- are more likely to be visiting the site for the first time (with their mobile device).
Most mobile visitors are using iPhones. Tablets account for a large portion of all mobile site visits.
Mobile visitors to your nonprofit’s site are:
- *far* more likely to be using an Apple device than an Android device and
- more likely to be using an iPhone than an iPad.
But if your nonprofit audience skews older, iPad is more popular than any other mobile device including the iPhone. (Read Google’s presentation on multi-device users.)
Mobile visitors already know your organization.
Mobile visitors are more likely to search than regular visitors. They are searching for:
- your organization’s name and
- your organization’s name + the name of your services.
Mobile visitors are looking for both for an overview of your organization and a way to connect directly to services and staff.
Once they find your site, mobile visitors land on:
- the homepage (26% – 59%),
- service pages and
- the “contact us” page.
This data is telling us to…
Make your nonprofit website more friendly to mobile visitors
Start treating your homepage, “services” and “contact us” page as landing pages. Create these pages so that visitors can complete their intended task on the same page where they enter your site.
Help participants connect with you when they’re browsing your site on their phone or tablet
- Explain, list or link to services on your homepage.
- List a phone number (as text), email address and physical address on your contact page.
- List a phone number (as text), email address and physical address in your footer.
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If your homepage has embedded key information like services or mission in a slideshow, make sure the slideshow is responsive / mobile-friendly!
- Or be redundant and also list this content as text
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Make sure your events calendar is easy to navigate on a mobile phone.
- If the events are formatted as a calendar which doesn’t display well on a phone, switch back to a list format and offer visitors the option to click over to the calendar format.
Help donors and supporters connect with you when they’re browsing your site on their phone or tablet
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Explain your organization’s mission and impact on your homepage otherwise many mobile visitors will visit your homepage and leave the site.
- Use images.
- Use text and keep it brief.
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Present a clear and easy to complete call to action on your homepage.
- Collect an email address and/or a mobile phone number.
- Encourage people to follow your organization on Facebook or Twitter and provide a link.
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If your homepage has embedded key information such as services or mission in a slideshow, make sure it is a mobile-friendly slideshow!
- Or be redundant and also list this content as text.
-
Make sure your events calendar is easy to navigate on a mobile phone.
- If the events are formatted as a calendar which doesn’t display well on a phone, switch back to a list format and offer visitors the option to click over to the calendar format.
Help all mobile audiences connect with you via email
Reading and sending email messages is the most popular activity on a mobile phone.
- Include the most relevant content in the email message itself.
- Don’t depend on images alone. Add text that repeats the most important information from the image.
Help all mobile audiences connect with you via social media
- Add social media icons and links to your email template. Make sure to use ALT tags for those social media icons, in case the recipient doesn’t enable images on their phone’s email reader.
- Ask social media users to sign up for email updates. Tell them why your organization’s email content is interesting and link them to a full page sign up form. Help them avoid stubby finger syndrome!
You might also be interested in reading: “TUTORIAL – How to find your website’s mobile analytics“
