SMX East: Responsive vs. Dedicated Mobile Sites

Today was tough at SMX East. It has been great learning from experts on SEO Performance Metrics and Tackling Content Duplication and Penguin Penalties, but today presented new challenges. All of the sessions were running parallel, and to be honest, our CEO forced me to attend the first seminar on mobile landing pages, so I was grumpy. But it was worth it.

The session was good with different channels of thought on mobile sites to really diversify it. While Chris Coward, CEO and Founder of WiderFunnel, insisted on responsive websites; Scott Brinker, President and CTO of Ion Interactive Inc., said we should have specifically mobile sites because they are a different segment altogether.

So you can take your pick, though Google recommends the first. (And as we all know, we always want to make Google happy, right?)

Chris Coward went on to propose the 'Lift Model' for assessing the functionality of the site. This includes assessing your mobile website with:

• Value Proposition
• Relevance: seeing where visitors came from
• Clarity of Message: is the CTA clear enough?
• Anxiety
• Distraction
• Urgency

Scott Brinkers list for having a separate mobile site (which, in my opinion, is pretty good):

• Native
• Super Light Pages (for speed)
• Targeted Copy and CTA
• Thumb-friendly Interface
• Mobile Specific Features

Carlos del Rio of Conversion and Digital Strategy shared some interesting stats:

• 90% tablet users engage with ads
• 61% leave brands with poor mobile sites
• 33% of mobile users research price in store

All three speakers were awesome and it was a very refreshing update for how we will design and build mobile websites from now on.