You would think that as more people go online and use tablets, brands and marketers would understand that people don’t want to be interrupted and that the online experience should be great. However, too many sites are still not optimized for mobile, and the experience of trying to share content works “most of the time,” but not all the time.
This weekend I tried to stay off of my iMac to read some content and make a few purchases, but I had to return to my iMac because the experience on my iPad sucked. I ran into sites that would not take input on my shipping address, as well as annoying full-screen pop-ups asking me to subscribe to their sites. To say it was highly irritating would be an understatement.
eMarketing 101 teaches us that every time we launch a site update, we test and validate our site on different browsers and platforms, but it seems many people don’t do this. I find that strange because the experience is even more annoying on my iPhone 6, and there is an excellent chance that I won’t go back to these sites if they “don’t work the way I expect them to.”
Desktop computers still rule as the access point for the Web, but mobile is growing a lot bigger thanks to smartphones. Apple is rumored to launch a giant tablet that may run OS X, and the bigger iPhone 6 is outselling the smaller model. It’s easy to “consume” the web using a tablet or an iPhone, but the experience can be hit or miss with some sites. My wife was going to place an order online via the iPad, but the incident caused her to put off her purchase, and now she is reconsidering it. To a brand, marketer, and eCommerce site, hesitation is a lost opportunity.
Until every online site uses a standard to test and validate their sites and realizes that annoying pop-ups aren’t productive, users will continue to leave them as we only have one chance to make a first opinion.
