4 Mistakes to avoid when gating your whitepaper

How your mobile conversion can be annihilated without you knowing it.

Getting and reading this content was a very cumbersome, almost annoying experience, but the same holds true for numerous other mobile content flows. Think about how difficult it is to convert an email into an iOS app use. The consumer must open their email in their mobile email client, click a link, get taken to the iTunes Store, click the “Free/Price” button, enter their password, wait for the download, exit iTunes, and finally find the app on their phone/tablet. Now this is not to say that you should never use conversion pages to collect email addresses— obviously  you need to turn clicks into leads. Nor is it an effort to discourage the development of apps. What these examples are meant highlight is how important simplified content access is to mobile consumers. It’s doubtful that many users on phones or tablets went through that whole process to access the PDF document. On the other hand, they very well may have read the report on their devices if the process of getting the content had been easier – simpler. Similarly, there are times when a mobile app is necessary to provide an interactive experience. But there are other times when, again, that content could be delivered via a simple link to a mobile-optimized page. Given the barriers to getting a download, is an app always the necessary channel? Of course, the best methods for reaching mobile consumers will vary depending on your situation and goals. However, this will not change: the simpler you make accessing your content on mobile devices, the more engagement you will get. Ultimately, isn’t that the point?

Step 4: Consumer waits for PDF to download/load and gets to see the report. Somewhat.  Finally made it to the content. Honestly, conversion on this for mobile cannot be anything but up for improvement. But then the content arrives and indeed:  ”it is an eye-test, and to click the correct link, an agility test as well. Not for folks with big hands.” The content is extremely hard to read, and is going to require a lot of effort on behalf of the consumer.

Step 2: Consumer clicks email and is taken to a landing page in their browser. Indeed, once more:  ”it is an eye-test, and to click the correct link, an agility test as well. Not for folks with big hands.”

Step 3: Consumer fills out the required info in a form. Filling this form out on a mobile phone was quite an achievement. Apart from the unnerving scrolling and zooming required, as you can see, often it is not even visible which field one is filling out.