Mike Rastiello
I’ve written previously about my love of reading my RSS feed on my phone before I go to sleep every night. It’s the perfect way for me to end my day.
However, there is one bad trend I notice on mobile sites and it really interferes with what I want to do on the site – READ IT. Shocking, right?
So many of the sites that I click through to read I’m greeted with a giant and obnoxious email subscription box. Is that any way to greet a reader going to your site for the first time?
They likely landed on your site because they clicked a link from a search engine or social media because the link to your article interested them, and before they can read one sentence of that awesome content that you spent hours writing they are smacked in the face with an aggressive call to action.
Not cool, guys.
Other things I’ve seen are ads and calls to action that slide up from the bottom of the page, which cover some, or most of the content on the page. And they scroll along with you!
I understand ads and calls to action are important for some blogs, you may even need them to survive, but ads that take over a page and hijack the user experience is bad for users and if those users leave your site because of them, well that’s bad for you, too.
The silver lining, for iOS users anyway, is that in iOS 9 due out this fall, Apple will allow developers to build content blocking apps and extensions for Safari to combat some of these sites and ad networks who are way too overaggressive.
Take a look at the screenshot below. There are four giant ads on this screen before you see any content other than the title of the article. First mistake? They have a GIANT ad on the right that squishes their content on the left side. Second, the site isn’t responsive! This is another thing we notice all to much. We’ve talked about how important responsive sites are over and over and over and over and, well, you get the point.
You’re actively stopping people from doing what they came to do on your site, and that’s not cool. If you are considering the use of pop-up or slide CTAs be sure they are as unobtrusive as possible and don’t keep your visitor from doing what they want to do most – read your content. Also, be sure your CTAs are optimized for a mobile experience.
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