the brief

Macmillan’s mobile traffic rose sharply from 9% to over 20% in 6 months, most significant was the time spent on each page, which doubled. Macmillan had proven that a mobile site was a highly valuable asset and wanted to build on its success with the addition of more information, interactivity, usability and design and mostly importantly to cater for tablets – all from one site.

Based on the detailed analytics bemoko worked with Macmillan to deliver new designs, user experience and page flows, that played to the needs of users and took into account all the latest trends and feedback from the wider industry.

The result is one of the best mobile sites around. Why? Because it is mobile – The site is delivered on a mobile platform, which delivers fast load times and pages built on demand for every type of device. The site is designed around the way people surf using a mobile, and delivers the content in a way that makes navigation fast, clear and understandable and yet delivers all the content so users are not left feeling they need to go somewhere else for the rest of the story.

the solution

The advanced analytics that Macmillan had gathered using their phase 1 site had given them unique insight into the way that users accessed the site, moved around the site and which information they were most interested in. This data was used to determine how pages should look and how the content should be presented.

The key findings were the variety of handsets, both older models and also new devices like tablets, the times of day that pages were browsed on mobiles, and the way that mobile users consumed the content, which included tablets – tablet users did not browse in the same way as a PC user would browse (dispelling thoughts that the PC site was suitable for tablets).

The objective of the Phase 2 site needed to exploit all of these findings and deliver a refreshed mobile experience that catered for ALL mobile devices including tablets:

• Deliver a rich yet mobile contextual design
• Deliver a user journey designed to keep users on the site delivering relevant and easy to digest content
• Deliver a device by device design rendered on the server before sending it to the device for speed and the richest experience for each user
• Increase mobile return visits and time on site

Macmillan have taken a unique approach to the delivery of this mobile site – Macmillan studied in detail the analytics gained from the Phase 1 site and deeply understood that mobile browsing had very little parallels to PC browsing – the new site was completely designed around mobile browsing. Using the detailed data new user flows were created, then leading edge designs were created for feature phones, tablets and smartphones using niche mobile UX designers. Finally the bemoko platform was configured with the new design elements – the bemoko platform uniquely detects every type of device and configures the individual elements, user flows and preferences, before compressing the data and sending it to the phone or tablet, delivering fast and dynamic pages.

Unlike any other approach, where a redesign would have meant a whole rewrite of the site, the bemoko platform was already in place, connected to all the existing CMS and data feeds, consequently the final deployment was a very quick process, taking just a few weeks, without any regression testing.

From a project kick-off in January 2012, the new and improved mobile experience was launched in February 2012.

Andy Nash, Macmillan’s Digital Project Manager (Mobile Channel) commented, “Using bemoko we have been able to develop a site which tailors its style for different devices. This gives us the ability to present information, features and functionality in different ways to different audiences based on what we know about their devices, features and functional capabilities, and enables the delivery of a much more personalised experience.”

Mat Diss, Managing Director at bemoko said, “This is exactly what bemoko was built to do, it’s great to see an organisation take mobile web to the next level and really embrace the advanced features and power of our platform.”

the benefits

The results in just 6 months of the new site going live indicates that having a dedicated mobile strategy, supported by mobile experts, using technology and methodology built for mobile is driving the effectiveness of the site. Macmillan is predicting that mobile traffic will reach 50% of their total traffic possibly as early as the end of the year.

• 22% mobile traffic prior to new site go live in Feb 2012
• With the new site in place the total mobile traffic rose by 32% accounted for a total of 29% of their entire web traffic
• Page Views from Mobile as a total of all traffic has almost doubled from 12% to 22%
• Visits from mobile devices spend twice as long as on the previous version

The stats demonstrate that delivering a rich and dedicated user experience increases the effectiveness of the site, keeping users engaged for longer and building trust and reliance on the site. Accessibility for users on any mobile device or tablet is attained as part of the delivery, so no additional costs for long-tail are incurred and therefore there is no ROI calculation needed to determine which customers can be “left out”.

Mobile Site: m.macmillan.org.uk