Designing for a Great UX when Mobile is First in Google Search

Mobile search has consistently grown year after year and Google has dominated mobile search results as the browser of choice among consumers, averaging 15 Billion searches a month in the U.S alone. In late 2016, Google released its first mobile-friendly update that boosted search engine rankings for mobile-friendly sites, while non-mobile friendly sites received decreased rankings.

Since Google announced its "mobile-first search" results indexing where mobile search results will take priority over desktop search results, the search marketing industry has been abuzz with interest and speculation when this update rolls out in full. Search Engine Watch, among other leading search marketing information companies, estimates that the official release will occur in the latter half of 2017 and into early 2018.

Two years ago, Google announced that mobile search surpassed desktop results. Since mobile is now the predominant way that people search on Google, it makes sense to offer an excellent mobile user experience. It's also clear that one of the issues Google is tackling here is poor usability in many mobile sites today. Improving user experience on mobile has become a top priority for Google search.

3 out of 4 Mobile Searches Results in Follow-Up Action

Mobile search is always happening on the go, at home and at work. Search is often tied to a specific context. A customer can also interact with your brand multiple times, starting search on a mobile device, and continuing on to a desktop interaction, telephone call or store visit.

As the following infographic from Think with Google indicates, actions triggered by mobile search happen quickly.

How do you improve the usability of your site?

Test Your Site

First test your existing site using Google's free mobile-friendly test tool at https://search.google.com/search-console/mobile-friendly. Just type in your website's domain URL and gain some insights about the mobile performance of your site - what's working and what you need to improve upon.

You can see an example here of our own site.

Content

This has to be easy to access - not pinching and zooming in for legibility. It also has to be succinct in length, to fit on the small size of a mobile screen.

Is your site content visible and accessible? Is your content consistent across your mobile and desktop versions?

Unified Site, Responsive Design

Some websites have deployed separate mobile and desktop versions with different URLs, dynamic serving and even a watered down version of their complete website for mobile devices. This hinders usability on mobile devices, requires more ongoing upkeep and can lead to a frustrating user experience for your customers, clients, partners and team.

Instead, using responsive design means that your site will be consistent across platforms and devices, adjusting to browser and screen sizes automatically. This prevents the need for future maintenance of separate URLs and technically, separate mobile and desktop sites.

Conscious Design

In addition to creating a responsive design that works seamlessly for both desktop and mobile versions of your site, you will also want to think about the layout of individual pages. For example, if you have an e-commerce site, avoid putting large content blocks at the top of a page with products towards the end. One way of designing this effectively is to add the product images first with a title, brief bulleted text and a 'Read More' or other labeled button that can be expanded upon for more information.

Page Speed

Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Gary Illyes confirmed in Nov 2016 that page speed is a factor in the next mobile update. Google already has been using page speed as a factor in terms of page rank and this will continue to be relevant when the mobile-first index is completely live and in use.

It's important to note that if a person is accessing your site without Wi-Fi and just dependent on a cellular connection, site access can be really slow.

Check your site's speed using Google's PageSpeed Insights Tool or GTmetrix. Take necessary measures to address any slowness in page loading time. Your site should load in three seconds or less. Kissmetrics reported that 40% of web users will abandon a web page if it takes longer than three seconds to load.

Google’s introduction of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) demonstrates its concern and commitment to improving page speed for mobile access. Your business can succeed in this mobile-friendly environment by providing a quick, user-friendly, AMP-ready user experience.

Knowing Your Audience

Keep your audience in mind throughout your site so it is personalized and relevant.

Real Estate and Home Improvement
For example, if your business is in architecture, real estate or home improvement, your site has to appeal to home owners and people looking to purchase or renovate their homes. Design is paramount in conveying professionalism, aesthetics and savviness. Your customers want to know that the company they are dealing with is capable of providing them the high quality and consistent service they expect. Your site's mobile readiness reflects your business' awareness and adaptability. A well-designed, mobile-friendly site with relevant content engenders confidence.

Tech Consulting
For a B2B business such as a tech consulting company, your site must be swift, tailored to your audience and get to the point quickly. Your audience is smart and knowledgeable. You need to convey essential information quickly and concisely.

Retail
In retail such as apparel or footwear, your customer expects a swift-loading mobile experience with large graphics, short descriptions and any promotions or discounts clearly visible. Today customers check online before going into a physical store to see if they can get a better deal and to learn more about the product they want to buy before an in-store visit.

Education
For universities and colleges, their customers are students and parents. Your site must therefore be appealing to both, proving the value of getting an education at your institution as compared to others and truly provide a compelling experience for students to want to attend.

Your Social Presence

The online experience you provide to your customers extends beyond your website to your social media presence. Your audience may visit your social media outlets (Facebook, Twitter and other outlets) to learn more about your company in a more personal and authentic way. This can be more important for Generation Z, Millennial and Generation Y audiences who look for socially engaged businesses.

Multimedia Results

As you may have already noticed, more images and videos appear in mobile search results, whether it is images from your Twitter Feed, videos from YouTube you showcase or other multimedia on your site. Consider this as you build your brand out and your ongoing marketing.

Optimizing for Local

Mobile search helps local businesses differentiate themselves and win over new customers very quickly through a compelling mobile user experience. Voice search has increased significantly with Siri, Google Assistant and Cortana and is three times more likely in use for local search, according to Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends Report 2016 by Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers. This increase is largely attributed to a significant improvement in technology that recognizes natural language along with access to larger vocabularies.

Data of Voice Search Usage from HigherVisibility.com

Consider your business and whether you have a lot of local search for your industry and product/service offering. If you do, having a local search strategy optimized for voice search can become a key differentiator for you. In addition to having a mobile-friendly site, also aim to target long-tail keywords and natural language keywords for your business. Verify your business on Google my Business. Make sure your contact information is consistent across your website, social media and any other relevant links.

In conclusion, by following these tips above you can optimize your website for your customers and be prepared for the full mobile-first rollout in the months to come.

Design-Driven Companies Outperform the S&P by 219% over 10 years

“When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world.”

— George Washington Carver

Design is a key differentiator in driving business success and customer engagement. In a study conducted by the Design Management Institute reviewing business performance for design-driven companies as compared to the S&P Index over a decade (2004-2014), design-driven companies consistently outperformed the S&P by 219%.

Design-Led Companies: A Winning Business Advantage

A well-designed customer experience that is based upon deep customer understanding and provides effective, compelling visuals and relevant interactions, can make the difference between a loyal customer and one who walks away dissatisfied.

From July-Oct 2016, Forrester Research Consulting conducted a study commissioned by Adobe to explore how design practices may create a tangible, measurable business advantage. To do this, Forrester developed a design maturity framework to evaluate how companies use design in their business practice for marketing, product and customer experience. This included interviews and surveys of decision-makers at companies in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, South Korea, Australia/New Zealand, and Japan.

The study resulted in identifying 2 different categories of business - design-led firms versus those that did not place a priority on design.

What’s a design-led company?

A design-led company is one that puts design at the core of its brand. The company weaves design principles into everything it does— from research and strategy to creating content. Leadership and management at these companies think beyond transactions and focus on creating beautiful experiences that build lasting and meaningful relationships with customers. (Source: Adobe)

Design-led companies reported:

41% higher market share

46% competitive advantage overall

50% more loyal customers

70% digital experiences beat competitors

Key findings revealed that in design-led firms:

Design permeates the organization, driving culture and the ambition to do better.
There is support throughout the organization to nurture talent and to have a variety of skills from strategic to visual, technical and more with collaborative work processes.
The company embeds tactical and production-level design from strategy through application across user experience.

Also companies with less advanced design practices typically underestimate the business benefits of design-led customer experience.

Design-led firms excel at world-class customer experience strategy and implementation.

Leadership at design-led firms also have a keen awareness of the importance of design in creating an enjoyable customer experience that customers love and want to experience again. In fact, most design leaders interviewed consciously put customers first and emphasized the importance of creating an emotional bond with customers and having an advanced design practice to help support this.

Companies that prioritize design are also more likely to innovate and test ideas out with customers. They also invest in tools, training and systems to do this, and have design practices and processes in place to support their customer experience strategy.

Design-led firms also consciously aim to create seamless customer experiences across a variety of touchpoints and devices. Today so often customers begin a product search with a phone call, website visit from a desktop computer or visit to a store and then follow up on a smartphone or tablet. Your new customer may interact with your brand across multiple touchpoints before making a purchasing decision. Creating a seamless customer experience that adapts to how your customer finds and interacts with your business is key.

Disrupting Industries and Transforming Businesses

Design-driven startups have also disrupted industries. Uber transformed the transportation industry with a well-designed app to connect riders to drivers, while AirBnB also disrupted the hospitality industry with the idea of home rentals through an elegant website and mobile app. These companies definitely had innovative ideas, but they were able to pull in and engage customers through exceptional design and swift, intuitive user experiences.

Personalized Touch

Great design works hand in hand with great content. Your audiences connect with your company via excellent content that is personal and speaks to them individually. Together this leads to an engaging, enjoyable customer experience. This in turn, drives connection, loyalty, ongoing engagement and revenue.

Showing you care about your customer requires empathy and listening. In talking with your customers, you'll learn more about the decisions that led them to buy in the first place. You'll discover what both their expressed and unmet needs are. Sometimes, this in turn, will help you create a better product or service. These kinds of conversations and insight always drive better customer experiences.

Design Maturity

Through its study, Forrester identified companies with significant design-led practices as possessing 'design maturity.' A company with design maturity prioritizes design, putting design at the core of its culture and customer experience, invests in people and processes and is constantly learning and improving. This in turn, differentiates the design-led company from others and wins over the customer by often a large margin. (Source: Adobe).

Stand out in an increasingly competitive landscape with growing digital touchpoints and increasing customer expectations with design. Assess your brand's design maturity and follow the recommendations below to deliver best in class, design-led digital experiences that help you drive business results and growth.

When you have a design-led company, you can attain more satisfied and loyal customers, significant competitive advantages and greater market share than companies with a less mature design approach. You will also build an atmosphere that encourages innovation, continuous improvement in process, product and customer experience.

What You Can Do

If you are a C-level executive, manager or owner, here are a few recommendations to help you bring design to the forefront of your business and gain this competitive advantage over the long term.

1.) Include a variety of design roles

This ranges from visual and interactive design to research, interactive wireframing, and other processes that can help you uncover customer needs, plan and map out customer goals and execute customer experiences. Keep your definition of design broad so that you are not limited.

2.) Encourage design leadership across roles

Hire, train and support design leadership through training, mentorship, recruitment and support so that you bring in design thinking for continuous improvement.

3.) Establish cross-functional design processes

Add design capabilities throughout your organization from initial conceptualization to final execution.

When you lead with design, you end with great results.

Get in touch with us at business@elf.agency or submit an RFP.

The Connected Car

We’ve become accustomed to the conveniences offered through our smartphones and tablets, keeping us connected and aware whenever we want. It’s also simplified and streamlined many aspects in daily life. Need groceries delivered? There is an app for that. In fact, there’s an app for practically anything you need to get done.

How do you feel though when you get into your car? Does this remarkable ease of use fade away? Are you frustrated by returning to your pre-digital world? How much interactivity do you want and how?

We are interested in questions like this. The Connected Car has been a growing topic of interest particularly in the last two years, offering opportunities for creating better driving and passenger experiences with relevant traffic information. It also provides marketers a way to gain real-world access to consumer behavior and preferences. In an insightful piece in 2015, Ad Age explores four areas of interest for marketers, such as audio, video, custom services marketing and personalized location targeting.

Elf: Designing for an Integrated Car Experience

One thing we’ve been keen on is the integration of tech in the car dash. Since 2015, our founder Jan Manon has been working on automotive UI design for select automotive manufacturers to provide a more ‘integrated’ car experience in Schweiz. With the upcoming launch of our new Hayden’s podcast this year, we are also keen on providing a seamless audio experience for passengers. We are eager to provide better design and innovative design elements as we bring digitization into the car.

Geneva Motor Show

Since 1905, the Geneva Motor Show has offered an avenue for introducing new automotive design and manufacturing for top models and companies every year. From the buggy-styled Clement in 1905 to Fiat, Jaguar, Alfa Romeo, Mercedes, Mayback, Ferrari models over the years, the Geneva Motor Show brings together automotive enthusiasts all over the world. This year our engineers were happy to attend. It was a busy 2 week-long event with over 600,000 visitors, 900 new car models and 175 new car concepts and models unveiled from Peugeot to Aston Martin.

Electric Models & Greater Efficiency

This year there were several electric models as well as several manufacturers make the move to all-electric vehicles. Car companies such as Peugeot, Fiat, BMW, Hyundai and others showcased hybrid vehicles and energy efficient models.

Porsche Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid (above)

Bentley Exp 12 Speed 6e Concept (above)

This is an all electric convertible, showing Bentley’s ongoing switch to electric-powered vehicles, starting in 2018 with the Bentayga plug-in hybrid drive train.

Futuristic Design

There were also some futuristic designs such as Aston Martin’s hypercar, Valkyrie below that is a limited edition vehicle with only 150 units for the road and 25 track-only versions.

Aston Martin's Valkyrie (above)

We also loved the sleek futuristic design of the Dendrobion EV model below.

Dendrobion EV (above)

Some of Our Favorites:

Below are some of our other favorites from the show. This includes a Mercedes Maybach G650 Landaulet wagon, Mercedes GT C Roadster Edition 50 and Aston Martin BB11 - all great for cruising through the city or in the mountains as well.

Mercedes Maybach G650 Landaulet (above)

Mercedes GT C Roadster Edition 50 (above)

Aston Martin DB11 (above)
We're big fans of the DB11 model with a beautiful chassis and new tech integration.

We're excited to contribute and design new interfaces for cars in 2017 and beyond!