In 2008, Mary Meeker, analyst at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, predicted “mobile will overtake fixed Internet access by 2014”.
In 2014, just as she anticipated, the number of mobile users officially exceeded the number of desktop users around the world. Since then, then gap between mobile and desktop internet users has expanded significantly:
post-click landing page report global users
Americans are now checking their mobile devices as many as 150 times per day, and spending more time on their smartphones and tablets than they are watching TV (197 minutes daily vs. 147 minutes daily).
It’s no longer a question of whether or not mobile marketing is necessary — we know that it’s essential. Now it’s a matter of using the evidence to understand things like what users’ mobile preferences are, how they behave when using different types of devices, what factors provide the best user experience, etc.
Americans are checking their mobile devices as many as 150 times per day.
Click To Tweet
To help you understand some of these components, we recently announced the first benchmark for mobile post-click landing page performance: The State of Mobile Conversions Report. Conducted by Instapage, this post-click landing page report analyzes mobile conversion rates across multiple qualifiers, including:
Industry
Digital advertising budget
Geographic location
mobile post-click landing page report Instapage
Our report demonstrates how completely-optimized, mobile-responsive post-click landing pages can achieve significantly higher conversion rates. There are three main factors mentioned in the report that contribute to a superior mobile post-click landing page experience: responsive design, personalization, and load speed.
This article will dive deeper into that last component.
Page load speeds and conversion rates
Fact: Mobile consumers expect and demand instant gratification, and with mobile post-click landing pages, that means they must load quickly.
The problem: The size of web pages loaded on mobile devices has quadrupled over the last five years.
The main cause: Images — which account for 68% of total page weight.
Let’s take a closer look.
Our mobile data report details how and why your visitors are likely to bounce before converting if your post-click landing page loads too slowly or creates a disjointed experience. Therefore, it only makes sense that speeding up your page’s load time will reduce its bounce rate and likely increase its conversion rate.
Data from Google further confirms that page load speed is pivotal to gaining a competitive advantage:
61% of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site that they had trouble accessing, and 40% of them will visit a competitor’s site instead
53% of consumers will leave a page that takes longer than three seconds to load
Conversions decrease by 20% for each additional second it takes for a website to load
Conversions decrease by 20% for each additional second it takes for a website to load.
Click To Tweet
How images fit into the equation
There are many causes for slow-loading pages, but images are the most common culprit.
As a marketer, you know that images can increase engagement on post-click landing pages (and ultimately conversion rates). Although, the question must be asked — how many is too many when it comes to mobile conversion rates?
We discovered that post-click landing pages with one image have much higher conversion rates than post-click landing pages with zero images. More than three images, though, tends to cause mobile conversion rates to decline dramatically:
post-click landing page report images conversion rate
Fortunately, Google released two solutions to combat slow page load speeds. First, Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) helps designers create quick-loading mobile-optimized web pages that use 10x less data than average. Publishers are able to create the content one time and then have it loaded anywhere instantly.
Next, the search engine giant unveiled ALP — AMP for ads and post-click landing pages — which allows advertisers to convert prospects faster than ever before with a streamlined mobile experience.
The combination of these two means users can navigate to an AMP page, click an ad built with AMP HTML, and be immediately directed to an AMP-constructed post-click landing page. This naturally shortens the process time by eliminating the usual click, tracking redirect, post-click landing page redirect, and loading process. Instead, it’s reduced to two steps — click and load — which improves page load speeds, reduces bounce rates, and increases conversion rates.
Test your mobile page load speed
Pinpointing the cause of your slow-loading page isn’t always easy, because while the amount of text and images are quickly noticeable, issues like excessive JavaScript and too many redirects aren’t as obvious. Fortunately, there’s a way to find out exactly what’s slowing your page’s load time.
Google PageSpeed Insights allows you to quickly test the speed of your web page. Simply entering a URL and clicking “Analyze” will provide you with a detailed report of what’s slowing that web page based on two parameters — time to above-the-fold load and time to full-page load — both complete with recommendations on how to resolve the problem.
Here’s an example of a GoToWebinar free trial post-click landing page and its score:
post-click landing page report GoToWebinar
post-click landing page report PageSpeed Insights
If you were to click “show how to fix” in the “Optimize images” section, you would see that GoToWebinar could save significant bytes of data by formatting and compressing the post-click landing page images.
According to the Google website:
PageSpeed Insights measures the performance of a page for mobile devices and desktop devices. It fetches the URL twice, once with a mobile user-agent, and once with a desktop-user agent. The PageSpeed Score ranges from 0 to 100 points. A higher score is better and a score of 85 or above indicates that the page is performing well.
So, clearly, the 60-score on the example above is not ideal and it’s in GoToWebinar’s best interest to reevaluate the page for a better user experience.
Learn more with the complete post-click landing page report
Mobile post-click landing pages stand at the forefront of customer acquisition, and mobile usage will only continue to grow. Therefore, it’s pivotal that your content be mobile-responsive and deliver a positive user experience across all devices.
Setting a new industry standard, our mobile data report demonstrates that post-click landing pages can perform well when fully-optimized and mobile responsive. And that includes fast page load speeds. Download the report for more insights, strategies behind mobile conversions, an overview of mobile conversion technology, and more.