Optimizing mobile search, Apple pay and important mobile updates

April was a busy month in mobile services. Here are some of the latest news that you need to keep up to date with.

Optimizing for Google Mobile Search updates

On April 21st, Google updated their search engine algorithm  "boosting the ranking of mobile-friendly pages on mobile search results" frequently referred to as #mobilegeddon.

Many big companies (including Fortune 500) websites are not mobile friendly and are expected to be negatively affected. According to one study only 52% of Fortune 500 companies have mobile friendly websites. Some popular sites like Reddit are reported to have dropped -27% in their mobile rankings compared to desktop rankings.

And search is important. See the following analysis of mobile traffic sources from brandingbrand.com

In short, the update is heavily favoring mobile friendly websites (pages more specifically) in Google's search engine results page for search queries from mobile devices.

It also returns specific app "content" higher in mobile search results (if App Indexing has been setup) as long as it believes the App content is relevant to the mobile search query. Our friends at Exicon actually points out that you should focus on the in-app engagement instead and #mobilegeddon is not an issue.

Organizations can use Google's Mobile Friendly Test tool to determine which webpages are not mobile friendly and the Mobile Usability report in Google's Webmaster Tools to identify any site-wide issues.

For the more tech savy, other tools like Chrome's Device Mode plug-in (video) can help troubleshoot issues on specific mobile devices (if you don't have hundreds of smartphones to test with).

Responsive vs Mobile Optimized (Adaptive)?

In a two blog post and a white paper we recently presented our insights and tips about the best option when your organizations website is going mobile for the first time or getting a major overhaul.

Why a mobile optimized site is better than responsive web

Why a responsive website is better than a mobile optimized or adaptive website

Looking for more reading to help make sense of Responsive vs. Adaptive Web? Download our whitepaper.

Is Apple pay a success?

In this year’s trend presentation we predicted that Apple Pay would grow slowly in terms of in-store payments. The interpretation of slow is obviously different for everyone so we will let you make your own conclusion on the success of Apple Pay to date.

Here’s the latest data on Apple Pay from Phoenix Marketing International survey in March:

• 66 percent of iPhone 6 owners had signed up for Apple Pay in the first four months.
• 88 percent of those people had used Apple Pay to make an in-store or in-app purchase (this includes bookings, commerce, and any other services or products that can be purchased using Apple Pay through an app).
• Almost half — 47 percent — said they went to a retailer that was supposed to accept Apple Pay, only to learn that the store didn’t actually accept Apple Pay yet.
• ?In cases where the service did work, 67 percent said they encountered some kind of problem. Those problems included:
  • transactions that took longer than desired (48 percent) whatever that means,
  • cashiers who were totally clueless about Apple Pay and who thus couldn’t help facilitate the transaction (42 percent),
  • transactions posted incorrectly or charged twice (36 percent),
  • payment terminals that didn’t work (27 percent)
• 48 percent of those who have tried Apple Pay haven’t used it a second time, and the average user has made only 2.6 in-store Apple Pay transactions since the system was launched.
• Among those who used Apple Pay in-store, almost half used it inside an Apple Store. About one-third used it in a Macy’s store, and 36 percent used it at McDonald’s.
• Finally, there have been some reported security breaches but most are related to normal credit card fraud simply using Apple Pay.
• For even more on this read Pymnts article here.

Based on our definition of ‘slow’, in-store payments made with Apple Pay are still growing slowly. We still think that reatailers should plan to adapt Apple Pay and other mobile payment solutions over the comming year but there is no immediate hurry for most brick-and-mortar stores and restaurants.

Other top mobile news to keep up with

These Brands are Taking it Over on Apple Watch

Google Search on Android will Now Recommend Apps to Install

Google Now Cards Integrated with 3rd Party Developer Apps

Google Ads iOS App Information to Google Search Results

L'Oreal Moves into Mobile Space with Scanning Platform Partnership

Apple Creates Wrist-y Business for Publishers, Advertisers

The End of Apps As We Know Them

As usual, let me know what you think and if these updates are useful. What do you want more of?