Mobile is becoming more and more important to PPC success. Globally, the percentage of internet users on mobile and tablet surpassed desktop last year. But those percentages still vary by industry and by country and by the time of day, etc. So while that information might sound helpful, with so much data being aggregated, it may not represent your business, industry or website. For YOUR business to succeed online you need to think through how YOUR website and PPC should be approaching mobile.
Here is a helpful framework to stay on top of your game:
How “Mobile” Are You Now?
Review your analytics and find out your current traffic split. For Google Analytics users, you’re looking for this in the left navigation:
Audience > Mobile > Overview
Select a date range (this example is last month) and you’ll get a nice clean report that looks like this:
We can clearly see that for this particular site, traffic is
- 46% mobile
- 38% desktop
- 16% tablet
Looking back at several date ranges can also be helpful.
So you know where you’re at in terms of current traffic breakdowns, now what?
Mobile and Your Business Goals
Next, you need to ask yourself how PPC plays into your client’s or your own business goals. Consider this line of questioning:
- What is the most important action you want a user to take on your website?
- On what device is that action likely performed?
- Is that the same device where a user will click a PPC ad?
- What is the website experience like on that device? (i.e. How long is load time on a mobile device? How much scrolling is needed to reach important information or the call to action (CTA)?
- Is traffic on one device more valuable than traffic on another device? (i.e. iPhone vs. Android)
- What is the second most important action you want a user to take on your website if they don’t take the most important above?
- Repeat above questions
As you can see, this process requires some time and some very deep introspection. You’ll likely need to obtain a lot of data from your website analytics, your back-end system (whether that’s a CRM, Salesforce, or sales software for example). But once you can confidently answer these questions, you’ll have the information to guide your PPC efforts.
Stay tuned for a follow-up post that shows how the information above will impact your PPC efforts, from campaign types to settings to audience targeting to ad copy.
Have specific questions related to mobile that you’d like answered? We’d love to hear your questions in the comments below.
