How Patients Find Your Site on their Mobile Device

Mobile users are accessing the internet from anywhere at anytime: in a store, comparison shopping competitor’s pricing; at home on the couch, searching for a product after viewing a commercial; killing time on Facebook while waiting in line; or looking for directions while on-the-go. In fact, a recent report from eMarketer shows 29% of the US population, or 90.1 million Americans, now use smartphones to access the mobile web.

Smartphone users are always on, always connected, and always looking for the best mobile experience available. Whether they use Siri, Google’s mobile app, or a mobile browser, they are performing searches at all hours of the day because it is often easier than firing up their PC or laptop. But users still want an optimal viewing experience and won’t struggle to find the information they need, which is why it’s important to consider how the mobile user will find your site.

How Do Patients Find My Mobile Website?

I rarely want to open my laptop at the end of the day, so I often turn to my smartphone to search and surf the internet. A common question from our clients is, “How do patients find and access my mobile site?” Instead of trying to tell you what this experience is like, I’d rather show you. Below, I have included screenshots of the different steps of the mobile search experience.

The Mobile Search Experience for Your Patients

I started by opening the mobile browser on my smartphone and typed in “plastic surgery Charleston.” Here you’ll see the search terms and paid ads at the top of the page, along with the top of the Google maps result.

The next screenshot shows the rest of the map and related listings with one-click call buttons and the beginning of the organic search results.

Down through the rest of the page one search results, things look fairly similar to the results page you get when conducting a search on a tablet, laptop, or PC.

Mobile Sites Make All the Difference in User Experience

While we don’t see much of a difference in the results pages, we will see a major difference once we click into a couple of the sites.

The image above is a screenshot of a non mobile site from my mobile device. The user experience on the non-mobile site leaves something to be desired. Patients looking to contact the practice or find directions, and potential patients hoping to view the before-and-after gallery, will have to first pinch, pan, and zoom to figure out where to click to find the information they want.

As we click into the next site, you’ll see the information is much easier to read, the buttons make it easier to interact with the page, and the user isn’t required to pinch or zoom to navigate through the site (full disclosure this is a mobile site for one of our clients).

The site automatically detects that we’re on a mobile device, and presents the mobile version of your site in place of the full version. However, if patients want to access the full version, they can do so with a single click.

So the moral of the story is patients don’t need to go searching for your practice’s mobile site, they will see it whenever they enter your site from a mobile device. They will always find a seamless, easy-to-navigate version designed to meet the specific needs of the mobile user.