The Holiday season is upon us and Black Friday is just around the corner! For many of our members, the time between now and the end of the year marks the busiest and most important season for your business.

Just this past holiday season, online sales broke the internet with a whopping 50% of online traffic and 30% of retail sales coming from mobile devices.

Want in on the action? Here are 5 ways you can optimize your mobile experience for your target audience:

1) Think Like a Millenial

While it may be easy to underestimate this generation, millenials are a huge part of the work force, with their careers and salaries only advancing. They spend extraordinary amounts of time on their mobile devices, from checking social media to handling their finances. They are also, however, spending much of their disposable income using their mobile devices and account for more than 20% of the nation’s total in consumer spending.

This means that your business content must live where your millenial consumers hang out. Be sure your brand has (at the very minimum) an active Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and (yes) a YouTube account. Don’t forget that TrueTour can live anywhere there is internet, and sharing to these social media sites is easy!

Posting your awesome content on all of these platforms will entice your millenial  consumer to learn more about your business, and they will be able to click to your website to buy right at their peak moment of buying decision.

2) Make a Lasting First Impression

The average person spends about 20 seconds on a website before deciding if they will stay or leave. By focusing on very clear and concise content, your customer will likely spend more time on your site.

According to an article from the Nielsan Norman Group, “Users often leave Web pages in 10–20 seconds, but pages with a clear value proposition can hold people’s attention for much longer. To gain several minutes of user attention, you must clearly communicate your value proposition within 10 seconds.”

This means making sure your site is loading quickly, has very simple and easy to find navigation tools, and relevant information is presented right off the bat. Using TrueTour’s amazing 360 videos, 3D Modeling images, and interactive Virtual Reality Tours on your homepage can easily help with this!

Make sure your TrueTour is easy to locate and view from your website’s homepage, above the fold. Have a clear call to action to “View TrueTour” or “View Virtual Brochure” or “Take Virtual Tour” in your main navigation menu. Google Analytics shows a very successful click-through rate on these web “events”, and TrueTour successfully keeps a viewer’s attention well above the global average!

3)  Slide-Friendly Options

Interactive options, such as “slide to next photo” or “tap to open” make it easier invoke the feeling of being right there at your place of business.

Using TrueTour on your main page can quickly capture and immerse your customer in the experience, leading them to engage directly with your material and creating a fun buying opportunity right from their phone.

We suggest taking advantage of creating a TrueTour banner ad – which can be either a video or an image – which engages the viewer immediately to click and dive in. In addition, each 360˚ photograph can contain an infinite number of interactive points of interest! Embed irresistible calls to action, videos, buy buttons, subscribe buttons, and other fun ways of transforming your TrueTour into an interactive immersive customer experience!

4) Quick Call to Action

While “asking for the sale” may feel uncomfortable to many, it is necessary to make purchasing as easy as possible for your busy customer.

Be sure your website has a very clear, obvious, and easy “call to action” button to close the sale. Some great examples are:

“Book Your Appointment Today”

“Buy Now”

“Come Check Us Out Today”

“Book Your Reservation”

Again, this is easy on TrueTour. By adding call to action buttons right on to your beautiful 360˚ photographs, you’ve created an elegant and effective way of inviting the mobile viewer to purchase and complete a transaction on their phone.

5) Use Social Media Promotions to Funnel More Clicks to Your Website

Now that your website is optimized for maximum consumerism, it’s time to have some fun with it! The Holidays are a great excuse to promote a very fun “giveaway” for your social media audience. Something as simple as “book your appointment before 12/31 and receive a free ____ (fill in the blank).”

It could be something as small as a free product or a free experience at your place of business. Consumers love anything free. Best of all, it will funnel more clicks to your website, without making your customers feeling icky about it.

How Will You Join The Mobile Movement?

Now that we’ve given you a few ideas, we want to hear from YOU. What challenges do you face as a business with engaging the mobile masses? What fun tricks and tips would you add to our list? What questions would you like to ask us (we’ll do our best to answer you!)?

In the comments section below, let us know how you plan to increase your mobile marketing, and the role TrueTour will play. We love comments, and we also carry the conversation over on your favorite Visiting Media social hubs: Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Instagram.