The Google Mobilegeddon Update rolled out by Google on April 21st! For most of our clients, it was not as bad as we thought it might be.
Thanks to the hard work with the folks at Yahoo helping to make the standard templates more mobile friendly, every Yahoo Store owner has access to a mobile version of their store out of the box.
That said, the new mobile templates are not perfect (especially in custom stores). In fact there are a number of refinements that need to be made to improve the shopping experience. Here are a few things to keep in mind:
- The store cart/checkout is not mobile friendly at this time. This is one of the most important aspects of the shoppers experience. To retain the mobile experience through the checkout funnel, FastPivot recommends a responsive solution for the cart.
- The navigation has been a challenge for some store converting from desktop to mobile. Yahoo Store uses the default contents fields to determine the store hierarchy, and not everyone store handles navigation in that way.
- If you have a number of custom html elements on the homepage or in page captions, this can cause readability or page width issues. Of course we want content legible for customers, but more importantly, if page width becomes an issue this can prevent Google from validation a store as mobile-friendly.
- Not all custom templates or 3rd party apps translate well to mobile. If you have any number of custom page types, templates, or 3rd party tools in your store, give these a test on mobile. A series of small adjustments can mean the difference between usable and broken.
- Yahoo has given the store owner a number of controls for basic branding and messaging in mobile, but you must take advantage of these new tools in order to ensure the best mobile experience. If customers are finding you on mobile, a store owner must be sure they are presenting a polished and thorough experience on first visit. These are normally small changes, but can have big results.
- Keep an eye on embedded pages, product options, product image treatments – any area that make your site unique. Anything unique and outside of standard templates can render a bit funny on mobile.
Shop your store on mobile! You can normally catch any of the above items by simply going shopping. Have your team members spend some time there and work through the steps that you require any visit to complete a sale on your store.
Here is an article that outlines Google Chrome’s ability to emulate devices right in your browser. This let’s you take screenshots and move a little faster when deciding what steps to take with mobile.
Questions? Concerns? Contact us! Let’s talk.
