<p>Thanks Sam! Absolutely agree. The "silver bullet" is nice in theory, but in practice what gets results is consistent improvement of the basics. Of course there is always room for advanced tactics and tech once you have those fundamentals down, but so often people skip the basics in favor of the shiny new thing. It's like anything...consistency and practice (or in this case, solid optimization at the basic level) will win out over raw talent (or in this case, a shiny advanced tactic) every time.</p>

<p>Hi Manoj,</p> <p>There are many different predictions about what might happen with SEO in the future...and many people more qualified than myself are trying to answer that question! My philosophy is that, while it is useful to be prepared for what might happen later, it is also important to focus on what is happening now. So far, the basic principles of SEO have remained the same since the beginning of Google...so I don't think we'll see that changing drastically in the near future. As I said in the post, the technology and tactics will certainly change, but the end goal so far has always been the same. <br /></p>

<p>Thanks for your comment Kamal! It's amazing how sometimes we can get really significant results just from getting back to the basics.</p>

<p>Hi Tom, you're absolutely correct that the advanced tactics and technology are hard to stay on top of...that's why it's so important for there to be experts and specialists! </p> <p>My point with this post is simply that you don't need to be an expert or a technical specialist in order to understand the theory behind *why* the experts are doing what they do. I've seen this idea that "SEO changes constantly" given as a reason for why people never even pick up a basic understanding of how Google works. It's almost always valuable to work with a specialist, but if you don't understand the most basic theory it's hard even to know who to hire, or what to hire them for. </p> <p>In my mind, it's a little like going to the doctor...some things can be treated at home, a lot of things need the expert to diagnose and treat. But people who understand the basic mechanics of their own body will find it easier to explain to the doctor what they need (and even to know when it's time to go to the doctor, when they can do a home treatment, and when a proposed treatment sounds like quack medicine).<br /></p>

<p>Haha Ronnie, I almost used that phrase in the post. I agree completely, the thing that does change is the "how" - but the "what" and even the "why" are (historically at least) pretty static.</p>

<p> Have you been feeling overwhelmed or intimidated at the thought of trying to “learn SEO”? Did this overview help make things a little clearer? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!</p>

<p>Ivan I love that story! And the way your enthusiasm for that topic could translate so well into the actual role you were applying for.</p>

<p>Great note Paul! I would agree that for me, understanding their thought process and seeing that they do know how to approach a problem logically is super important.<br /></p>

<p>Rebecca, thanks for your comment! I should clarify what I mean by "side projects" - I don't exclusively look for a candidate to be doing another digital marketing or tech-y project, but just something that shows that they're curious and motivated to work on something and learn new things outside of just punching the clock at work. So for example, we've had candidates who had successful websites and SEO projects on the side, and I loved seeing that. But equally, we've had candidates come in with a variety of interests and projects, and I love seeing that they have those other interests outside of tech. Things like: being a musician, rescuing animals, a website for people looking to become English teachers abroad, volunteering at their local church, volunteering with Crisis Textline, running an online magazine and organizing a music festival around female musicians, competitive kickboxing, standup comedy, travel blogging, working on a novel, studying for a Ph.D. in AI, extreme sports...these are a handful of the activities and interests that some of our team members and recent candidates have. </p> <p>And thank you for emphasizing the two-way street element. This is absolutely a process that goes both ways, and it is so important as a candidate to understand that going in. This is not a test you have to pass, it's an opportunity to explore whether this relationship, environment, and role feels right for what you want, just as much as for what the interviewer/employer wants.</p>

<p>Glynn, this is very true. Thanks for pointing that out!</p>

<p>Thanks Ryan! I totally agree with your point about "culture" - you do have to be careful with how this is interpreted. </p> <p>For me, I interpret "culture fit" as being about how this person will contribute to the team, whereas the other three areas - communication, getting things done, and smartness - are really more relevant to the person's individual contribution. That's why I evaluate culture fit through those two key questions:</p> <ul><li>"would this person push themselves, me and everyone around them to be better, through example and feedback?" and</li><li>"would this person thrive in a flexible working environment", in other words, will I be able to trust them to do their work without a lot of oversight or supervision, and to pull their weight.</li></ul> <p>I suppose there's also a third related area which I didn't mention explicitly in the post, namely - is this the sort of person who will see an issue or inefficiency and jump in to take ownership of solving the problem. Taking ownership is a strong Distilled value so I would see that as a sign of "culture fit".</p>

<p>Thanks Tim, glad you enjoyed the post! I agree, I always look for a more experienced candidate to be able to tell me a couple stories about 'your biggest client win' or 'a time when your work showed a significant impact', or 'the moment in your current role that you are most proud of'. This helps to show me whether they can walk the walk. That sort of question can give insight into the type of teammate that person is as well. I once had a candidate try to take credit for a relatively largescale campaign that showed some success. But when I dug into exactly what his contribution had been, it turned out that the results were not really due to his work but rather the work of an entire team. He wasn't leading the strategy, he wasn't responsible for the implementation - he had participated in a junior capacity.</p> <p>That wouldn't necessarily be an issue (he was applying for a less-experienced role) but I wasn't a fan of the fact that he wasn't totally honest about that.</p>

<p>Wow Thomas I would echo what the others have said - that's really strange. It sounds like those roles weren't a good fit! I love hearing that a candidate has side projects, and honestly if they bring in a little income on the side, to me that demonstrates hustle which is a quality we look for in our applicants. Of course as an employer there is always the fear that you'll bring someone in only to have them leave after a short time in the role. And of course if you said to me that these websites were your real passion and you eventually wanted to transition to that work full-time, I'd be a little more cautious - I'd at least want to get a sense of what sort of timeframe we could expect to keep you for, and whether you'd be able to give the role your full attention while you were at work. But I would never consider simply having a side project as a reason not to hire someone.</p>

<p>You're definitely right to point out that the requirements often vary based on things like size of a company or business model. There's no such thing as one-size-fits-all when it comes to SEO! That's why it's so important for businesses to be able to ask themselves 'how does this apply to me' when they read new research or recommendations.</p>

<p>Hi Kevin, thanks for your insights - always great to have a different perspective (and to hear that, nonetheless, it aligns with what I've been seeing as well). And you are absolutely on point when you mention that it's all about that process of research, test, and iterate. I'm really excited to see what the next 3-5 years look like in terms of this stuff, it should be a crazy ride!<br /></p>

<p>Oh that's great to hear! Definitely let me know how it goes!</p>

<p>Thanks Paul! Agreed - for me user behavior is at the center of everything. I think of it like a waterfall effect, where technological changes impact user behavior, user behavior alters search and ranking factors, and subsequently SEO tactics need to be updated. That's why it's so valuable when we can identify these behavior trends early, and adapt accordingly so that our websites and content better serve those use cases, rather than waiting for a Google announcement.</p>

<p>Thanks Sandra, glad you enjoyed it!</p>

<p>Absolutely Luis, it's so important to understand the user experience on a concrete level rather than simply thinking 'our site's responsive, we don't have to think about mobile anymore'. The same principle applies to Google's mobile-friendly test - it's more of a bare minimum rather than a full UX audit.</p>

<p>Thank you Dustin, I really appreciate your comments! </p>

<p>Thanks Jars, and great suggestion!</p>

<p>Ryan, thank you for your comment and the TED talk links! I will definitely check those out :)</p>

<p>Thanks Igor, glad you enjoyed it! I'm not sure about the Buzzfeed-Reddit connection but it wouldn't surprise me, haha.</p>

<p>Thank you, I'm glad you found it interesting! And I love that quote from your boss, it's so true. :)</p>

<p>Hi Asim, for now rather than trying to specifically optimize app content for search engine crawlers, I would simply suggest that you make sure the web version of your content is well-optimized and that the web page and app screen content is the same. The web page and app screen should be equivalent in order for the app content to be able to rank (otherwise you may get a Content Mismatch error in the Search Console). <br /><br />That being said, once app-only content indexation becomes more widespread I'm sure app content optimization will be a topic in itself!</p>

<p>Thank you Rand, it means a lot to hear that! :)<br /><br />I like the idea that a company would be able to include a bit of both - a company policy that reflects the 'empathetic and generous' values you mention, but also which allows that additional room to go above and beyond as an individual employee. But of course that's easier said than done! I don't think that large size and openness to individual initiative are mutually exclusive: even some pretty big brands do seem to be able to allow some latitude to their employees. One of my favorite examples is <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/11/netflix-customer-service_n_4086365.html" rel="nofollow">this Netflix customer service conversation</a>.</p>

<p>Thanks for sharing that deck Shawn, it's great and spot on! (Although as someone who writes about mobile, I have a tiny pet peeve about people using Apple as a marketing example, as in my opinion they're an edge case). </p> <p>Engagement is only of value insofar as the things you are using to drive engagement are related to your brand/product. That's why it makes me sad to see businesses sharing pictures of kittens because they read a blog post about how cute things drive more likes and shares. Metrics need to be based on some sort of bottom line, otherwise they don't actually give any insight.<br /><br />To your point about small businesses: you're right, and as a small business, your marketing strategy has to be about maximizing your resources - which often means your time more than anything else. However, some small businesses do extremely well on social media - a friend of mine had a client who drove a huge amount of business via Facebook flash sales! it's all about making sure you know where you get the most bang for your buck.</p>

<p>Hi Samuel,</p> <p>Thanks for the great and thoughtful comments! I suspect we don't actually disagree (or at least not completely, haha). I agree that it would be interesting to get other people's thoughts on this, here's my two cents:</p> <p>I certainly agree with your point that "I guess I'm saying that social media is a collection of communications channels that can be used for a variety of purposes. It's just that social media is good for some of these purposes and not others. I'd posit that B2C sales is not one of them." Especially that last sentence.</p> <p>I don't believe that social is a sales tool directly (except, as you point out, in the case of discounts which I think are a different use case - I'll come back to that). I view social media as the place that you a) start the customer relationship (so very top-of-the-funnel) and b) maintain a good engagement after purchase (good customer service, perks for current fans/customers, etc) You're also completely correct to point out that social media is actually several different channels - you can't use Twitter like Pinterest for example.</p> <p>But when I said "as a brand, you need to use social media like a normal person", that was primarily in the context of this social relationship building. Too many brands view social media as a way to broadcast things about themselves which their customers have no interest in (it's similar to the way they blast out press releases with headlines like "X Brand Profits up by 10% YOY" and wonder why they don't get coverage from journalists). Check out the Condescending Corporate Brand page I linked to in the post for a great example of the type of thing I mean (CCB is a parody page).</p> <p>I do think that the discounts point is a valid one, and also interesting because it actually proves exactly my point about market norms: discounts are a way of arguing to the customer that "my product is just as good...but cheaper". And this is the problem I have with Pizza Hut - I do like their pizza but their customer service is appalling (at least here in the UK) and their prices are often more expensive than Dominos. So unless I get a discount, or really crave their specific genre of pan pizza, I tend to purchase elsewhere. If Pizza Hut had the brand loyalty that comes with social relationships, maybe I wouldn't mind paying a bit more for the "Pizza Hut experience" because I'd have warm fuzzies about it. </p> <p>The problem is, at this point very few brands have succeeded in using this social norms model well because it's hard to get right. So I see no contradiction in the statement that 'the majority of people follow brands for discounts" with the overall point of what I'm saying in the blog post, which is simply that the brands who manage to succeed in building a loyal 'fan' community don't actually need to rely on having the cheapest prices because people want to buy from them anyway; and those are the cases in which the fans are getting more from the social media relationship than just a discount.</p> <p>Definitely interested to hear what other people think though!</p>

<p>Hi Michael,</p> <p>You're absolutely right that you should make these decisions based on your own data, not just 'average' stats. </p> <p>However, in my experience, 4% is quite low (the only one of my clients with that low a figure is a high-value B2B service provider - no one visits their site on mobile because they're doing it at work, on a work computer, and the deals are closed over the phone; the website is purely for lead gen). </p> <p>At Distilled, the average client whose data I've seen tends to see 10-20% of all traffic coming from mobile devices, which is a significant amount. Increasing conversion rate/UX for 20% of your audience can have a major impact on the bottom line. </p> <p>Also, sometimes where there is a big discrepancy in conversion rates on mobile vs desktop, people assume that 'people don't buy from us on mobile'; but in fact, doing CRO for mobile can improve both conversion rate and traffic from mobile. Basically, people won't do something if they get negative 'feedback' for it - so a poor user experience will deter people from using your site on a mobile.</p>

<p>Hi Adeel that's a fair point but pretty straightforward to address: </p> <p>if you have a responsive design, your mobile site is optimized as much as your desktop site (because it's the same HTML); </p> <p>if you have a 'dynamic serving' site (so different HTML on same URL), it's pretty simple: make sure your pages are properly optimized on-page, and use the Vary HTTP user agent header to avoid cloaking; </p> <p>if you have a separate mobile site, I wrote <a href="http://moz.com/blog/how-to-optimize-a-mobile-site" rel="nofollow">another blog post</a> on Moz about how to make sure it's optimized properly.</p>

<p>Basically I think it's because they don't need to. But it's certainly a frustrating, suboptimal user experience (as I know from my own experience with it).</p>

<p>Hi Deepak,</p> <p>If you're serving different content for different devices on a single URL, Google support that configuration (called dynamic serving), but recommend that you use a 'Vary User Agent HTTP header' to indicate that this is what you are doing. You can read a bit more about that here: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details</p>

<p>Hi Mainak, </p> <p>Thank you, glad you found it useful!</p>

<p>Hi Martin,</p> <p>That's a fair point; that said, I think there's a big difference between Google telling us <strong>not </strong>to do something versus stating that one approach is <strong>recommended</strong>. The page you linked to says that Google support 3 different types of mobile configurations - responsive, dynamic serving, and separate URLs.</p> <p>They recommend the Vary HTTP header when you use dynamic serving, in order to 'hint' to Google that you serve a different version to mobile devices (which allows you to avoid the appearance of cloaking).</p> <p>Ultimately, what Google cares most about in terms of a mobile site (from what I can tell) is that it provides a better user experience. If you can do this with responsive, great! But if we can provide a better user experience with dynamic serving (which seems likely, simply because it allows us to have more control over how you serve each type of device), I think we should go for it. But that's just me!</p>

<p>Hi Yogesh,</p> <p>Thanks, those are some really interesting stats! It really speaks to the idea that mobile is becoming a platform where brands can connect with people they otherwise wouldn't be able to reach.</p> <p>I'd be interested to know how the stat you shared breaks down further between smartphones, internet enabled feature phones and non internet enabled phones.</p>

<p> Hi Matt, </p> <p> That's a great question and unfortunately I don't know the answer - I suspect you'd need to ask a dev or designer that one! Glad you liked the post though :) </p>

<p>Hi Sean, glad you found it useful!</p> <p>When you said you're trying to figure out if its worth attempting it, I wasn't quite sure what you meant...are you thinking of making your ecommerce site responsive? Or do you just mean 'attempting' mobile SEO in general?<br /><br />Some resources on mobile SEO which I've found really helpful:</p> <ul><li>- Aleyda Solis, <a href="http://www.stateofsearch.com/mobile-seo-audit/" rel="nofollow">How To Do a Mobile Site Audi</a>t</li><li>- Bryson Meunier's keyword research post which I linked to in the post above.</li><li>- Google's <a href="http://www.howtogomo.com/en/d/" rel="nofollow">How To Go Mobile</a> site</li><li>- Cindy Krum wrote a great 3-part series of technical-oriented posts on the <a href="www.seomoz.org/blog/the-real-impact-of-the-google-smartphone-crawler-part-1-situation-overview">Google Smartphone Crawler</a>  (this link is to part 1)</li><li>- Aleyda's also written a post on <a href="http://www.aleydasolis.com/en/mobile-web-seo-tools/" rel="nofollow">tools for mobile SEO</a> and the pros and cons of different approaches to making a site mobile-friendly.</li></ul> <p>Hope that helps!</p>

<p>Hi Rivers, thanks for your comment, glad you found it helpful! </p> <p>As far as responsive sites, the first question is whether your site is 'pure' responsive (meaning the HTML is always the same, but the 'building blocks' are simply rearranged based on the screen size of the device), or a 'single URL' / RESS (responsive with server-side elements) version (which can serve different HTML based on device).</p> <p>The difference is: With pure responsive, you can't really differentiate title tags easily by device, as the source code is always the same and only the visual layout/CSS changes. With a 'single URL' site which does serve different HTML, you should be able to serve different title tags to mobile devices. The snag for those meta tags to display in the SERPs is that this relies on a) the Google Smartphone-bot crawling the site, and not just the regular Googlebot; and b) that result getting served from the mobile index rather than the web index (which currently doesn't always happen). </p> <p>The final thing that I would think about is this: if your mobile keywords are different enough that you want to serve different title tags, is the current content on that page still as relevant? Or would you be better off creating some new content to target those keywords?</p> <p>Hope that helps!</p>

<p>Hi echo1,<br />With internal linking, I suspect it's a better user experience if you link to the most relevant page of the mobile/desktop version rather than always taking the user back to the homepage. </p> <p>As far as external links, unless the content is exclusive to the mobile site, a link pointing to the desktop version should also count for the mobile site (and vice versa). As long as you have the redirects and the rel=canonical set up properly it shouldn't really matter.</p>

<p>Hi echo1, thanks, I'm glad if you found it useful! </p> <p>Sorry if that part was confusing, what I meant was that you only need to worry about optimizing your mobile pages for mobile keywords if you do the keyword research and see that mobile search terms are drastically different. This isn't always the case...it will vary depending on the type of site and the terms you're ranking for.</p> <p>However, optimizing for keywords is just one part of optimizing a site. So if your mobile keywords are the same as your desktop keywords, then you may not need to worry about creating content on the mobile site to target a different set of keywords from the desktop version. But you should still be doing the other things I mentioned in the post. As far as linkbuilding for mobile keywords, I would again go back to the question: are your mobile keywords drastically different or basically the same? How can you help the mobile searcher to best find what he or she is looking for?</p> <p>That said, if you've properly set up the user agent redirects in both directions, a link to your desktop site will redirect a mobile visitor to the appropriate mobile site page, and a link to your mobile site will redirect a desktop visitor to the appropriate desktop page. And the use of the mobile rel=canonical tag will indicate to Google that that's what is going on, which should help with not missing out on link juice.  </p> <p>Hope that helps!</p>

<p>@ Simon - glad you found it helpful!</p> <p>@Leeton - thanks for your comment. If you already have a separate mobile site it's best to always redirect mobile user agents there from the desktop version. The problem with just using viewport (as I understand it) for a non-responsive site is that, while it resizes the site to fit the device's screen, the user still needs to pinch and zoom in to find the information they need...the initial page view is almost always going to be far too small to read if you're viewing it on a smartphone. So while it may be a useful temporary measure while you create a mobile site or redesign in responsive, I wouldn't recommend it as a permanent solution.</p> <p>@Kristina - thanks :) and I know what you mean, I'm enjoying the discussion too, haha.</p>

<p>@Cuyler, Eblan, Hyderali and Anita - thanks for the kind comments, and really glad you found the information useful! </p> <p>@sitewizardseo - you're absolutely right, if you're serving a desktop version to tablet users you definitely need to test that it works on a touch screen and isn't based on Flash.</p> <p>@Marco and Mash - thank you both for the articles, you are correct that we need to consider the end goals (ours and the users'), and the pros and cons of whatever design is chosen. I'm personally a fan (when it makes sense and is possible) of using a single URL with different CSS served based on user agent. It's a nice middle ground between pure responsive design and having totally separate sites. But obviously every site has different needs/goals and the design should ideally be chosen from that context.</p> <p>@Ruben - Yes, that's one of the pros of a separate mobile site...being able to roll it out more gradually as time and money permits. Of course in the meantime it's important to have a strategy for addressing the issue of mobile users finding the mobile landing page and then navigating to pages which are only available in a desktop version.</p>

<p>@Rick - thanks, glad you found it helpful!</p> <p>@Charlie - you're right that site speed is hugely important...the stats about 74% of users leaving after a 5 sec wait speak for themselves! </p> <p>@Steven - thanks for your comments, and I love your point about the different user considerations for a more global-oriented business ... it's a great reminder for large international companies and perhaps a case in which the non-Javascript Google Analytics tracking would come in handy.</p>

<p> Hi Tarun, </p> <p> Great point about the SMS marketing, and really interesting stats. How do your open rates correlate to conversions though? And do you get a lot of opt-outs? </p> <p> One of the reasons I'm hesitant to recommend SMS marketing (unless it's done very carefully) is that it has a high potential to irritate people. (Possibly the stricter regulation you mention could help with this) I feel that they're slightly different from app push notifications (which also have to be done carefully) since an app you can adjust the settings on and you also download it directly so you expect notifications. Also, on a personal level, SMS messaging to me feels a bit more personal than that or than email; I don't particularly like getting ads via text. But I realise that my own personal experience as a customer may not be the same as most people's, so I'd love to learn more about the actual results that companies are seeing from SMS promotions. </p>

<p> Hi Krzysztof, </p> <p> I agree that the small screen makes our job harder in terms of creating a beautiful and usable website. But as it becomes a better experience, I think more and more people will make use of these devices for both browsing and transactions. So we need to be ready for them! </p>

<p> Hi Joshua, </p> <p> I hadn't heard of PhoneGap before, but from a look at their website it definitely looks interesting! </p> <p> I'll have to look into it, thanks for sharing the site. If you try it out I'd love to hear your thoughts. </p>

<p> Hi Ronell, </p> <p> Thank you for the kind feedback! And it's great to hear that you found the post valuable. </p> <p> I think so much of the problem comes down to lack of awareness about resources which make the mobile-friendly approach easier and cheaper. So I hope that this post can help someone realize that it's not as hard as they may have previously thought. </p> <p> Oh Forbes, the interstitial ad poster child whom I love to hate... =/ (although I should note I really enjoy reading Forbes, which perhaps is why the disappointment I feel every time I have to navigate past the ads seems so bitter, haha). </p>

<p> Hi Joe, </p> <p> The trend you've noticed in lower conversion rates for mobile devices seems pretty standard. I think there are two elements at play: </p> <p> 1) less friendly user interface makes it more difficult to check out on a smartphone (and sometimes on a tablet) than on a desktop </p> <p> 2) mobile phones are possibly used for research more frequently than other devices, due to the convenience factor. </p> <p> Worth making a distinction between mobile phones and tablets as well, as tablets broadly speaking can show conversion rates of as much as 4x that of smartphones. </p> <p> Another interesting stat I read stated that although tablets tend to convert at a lower rate than desktop traffic, the value per transaction is often higher (possibly because the demographic that can afford a tablet is a higher income one). </p> <p> I'll be interested to see how different these stats look over the next 5 years or so. </p>

<p> Hi Olivier, </p> <p> Thanks for your comments! </p> <p> It's great to hear success stories about implementation of responsive/mobile-friendly design :) I think the trend will continue as well. </p> <p> Thanks for noticing the broken link, apologies for that! </p> <p> I've tried to find the correct URL for that particular image but haven't had any luck. But I did find several other images visualizing the same statistic, which is from ComScore. Here's a link to a TechCrunch article which includes the ComScore visualization: <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/14/comscore-us-internet-report-yoy-pinterest-up-4000-amazon-up-30-android-top-smartphone-more/" rel="nofollow">http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/14/comscore-us-internet-report-yoy-pinterest-up-4000-amazon-up-30-android-top-smartphone-more/</a> </p>

<p> Hi Richard, </p> <p> Thanks for the comment, and I agree that Wordpress responsive themes can be a great way for small businesses to get started with mobile-friendly design. I'm really excited to see how popular they're getting with theme builders :) </p>

<p> Hi Janis, </p> <p> Thanks for your comment, good to see the value of mobile-friendly websites in action! </p> <p> I think that the real estate industry (at least in the UK) is missing out quite often on the value of mobile traffic, as so many of the estate agent websites I've seen are very unfriendly on a mobile device (which is often what I use to look at properties). I recently moved to a new house and had a lot of poor user experiences with various websites, even on an iPad but worse on a smartphone...made me want to go into consulting for estate agents, haha. </p> <p> So it's good to hear that you're implementing a responsive design to help your mobile visitors :) </p>

<p> Hi Garima, </p> <p> Glad you found it interesting! And it's good to hear that people are using these resources for their clients. It's so easy for small business owners to get caught up in the day-to-day of running their business and not have the time to research tools and other resources, so I hope that having them listed here can help them in that process. </p>

<p> Hi Imran, thank you! I haven't done a webinar, but I'm glad you found the post useful. </p>

<p> Hi Pankaj, </p> <p> Thanks for the comment, glad you found it useful! </p> <p> In terms of whether you should make a responsive website or use a separate subdomain, that's a decision that you have to make based on several factors. If you want more guidance, there's some good flowcharts I mentioned in the article...that's a good starting point. </p>

<p> Thank you Rick, glad to hear you liked it! It's so important to understand the capabilities of the platform you're working with, as is clear from the Facebook example you gave above. That's a very simple thing that can make a big difference (which is what I'm hoping a lot of the recommendations here can be as well). </p>

<p> Haha I know, right? My favorite example to use when calling out brands for using interstitials. </p>

<p> Thank you Sunny! </p>

<p> Hi Sam, </p> <p> No worries, it's a fair point! :) </p> <p> In terms of that question, I tend to fall back on the statistic which said that <a href="https://snaphop.com/2012-mobile-marketing-statistics/" rel="nofollow">61% of mobile users who land on a non-mobile-friendly site will leave and go to a competitor's site</a>. </p> <p> But in that case I'm really focusing on just having a usable site on mobile, rather than necessarily a beautiful, perfect design. And of course everyone's experience is different, and these things are always worth testing. If you do test it out I'd love to hear the results! </p>

<p> Hi Sam, thanks for the kind feedback, I'm glad you enjoyed the presentation! </p> <p> In terms of conversions/transactions: there is an upward trend showing over the past few years (don't know the exact figure off the top of my head) in the percentage of transactions which take place on mobile devices. It's also important when discussing 'mobile' to distinguish between smartphones and tablets: tablets tend to convert at around 4x the rate of smartphones; and tablets, while usually showing a lower conversion rate than desktops, are actually often found to have a higher value per transaction (possibly due to the demographic who can afford to own a tablet). </p> <p> I think there's 2 factors at play in that statistic about smartphones being used to research: </p> <p> 1. yes, often there is a behavioural pattern of smartphones being used as a research platform. I think this is probably because it's often the most convenient device when we remember something or hear about something that sounds interesting and want to look it up. </p> <p> 2. however, I do believe that there would be a higher percentage of transactions taking place from mobile devices <i>if </i>it was easier to complete transactions on a smartphone. I know that I personally have bought items from Amazon several times with my smartphone because the 1-Click system makes it easy, whereas with most other websites it's much easier to complete the transaction on a desktop or even a tablet. </p> <p> The final aspect of this is the attribution model you use. A mobile-friendly interaction with your company may play a huge role in whether that customer returns to checkout on a different device, or whether they find the same product elsewhere and go there later to buy it. Mobile devices are often the first touchpoint a consumer has with your brand/business and it needs to be a positive experience. So you could argue, from a 'first click' model, that in fact the mobile interaction drove that later conversion even if it occurred on a desktop device. </p>

<p> I do the same thing, and have wondered in the past whether this might skew these types of results... </p>