Five ways to get your charity website better at the mobile internet
Posted: December 9th, 2010 | Author: Sam Bueno de Mesquita | Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »Two things happened at work last week:
- an early draft of our communications strategy, which said that by 2013 we should be prepared for mobile web
- a survey which said that 60% of our users were already browsing the web on their mobiles
After years of gestation, mobile internet is here. So after some panicky research, I’ve identified some bits and bobs that us charity web editors can do right now do improve fundraising and campaigning on the mobile web.
1.Put phone numbers next to your donate buttons
Filling out your card details on a mobile phone is a huge nuisance – on some touchscreens it’s borderline impossible.
Calling someone, on the other hand, takes only one click. If you don’t put a phone number RIGHT NEXT TO your main call to action, you’re losing donations.
2. Keep your forms short
Marketing want to capture 18 different pieces of information about everybody who fills in a form, including the name of their dog, and what they feel is Stanley Kubrick’s most complete film*.
Give them an iPhone and tell them to try filling in their mammoth bloody form without using any foul language. Laugh at them for a while, and then quietly capture name, email address and nothing more.
*Barry Lyndon, in case you’re interested
3. Find out about your mobile users
Build a segment in your analytics that only includes people using mobile browsers. Look at what content they’re visiting.
Your website is being accessed in a different way and for different reasons on mobile. I’m finding a high proportion coming in from social networks to news and blog pages, or from emails to campaign landing pages – and proportionately fewer arriving from search or hittting the homepage.
Identify the pages people are browsing with their phones and then see what you can do to make them work..
4. The third column in your 3-column layout is now officially worthless.
Sorry. It just is. If you’ve been putting important content in there, nobody browsing on a mobile will see it, however much you make it pop.
Nobody with a phone is going to find anything that’s not slap bang in the middle of your central content.
5. Don’t get complacent just because you’re ahead of the game on txt
We know about txt. It’s a high-cost, high-return fundraising tool. It’s great for getting campaign actions out of people, too. It has nothing to do with the mobile internet.
Some other pages I found useful are here.
- Apple’s no-donation policy for apps is a cop-out
- Mobile Usability (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)
- 5 Can’t-Miss Usability Tips for Mobile Website Designs | SpyreStudios
- A Three Step Guide to Usability on the Mobile Web | mobiThinking
Anything glaringly obvious I’ve missed? Chuck it in the comments.
