Ryland Homes recently launched a mobile-friendly site that has resulted in a 300 percent increase in mobile traffic and lower conversion costs compared with desktop.

With traffic growing from mobile devices on Ryland?s desktop site, the builder of new homes recognized the need for a mobile site for on-the-go prospects. The site, which was launched earlier this year, has produced strong results, including the first home sale that began with a mobile lead.

?At the end of the day, our site is for our customers to easily shop for a new home and ultimately provide us the opportunity to sell more homes,? said Diane L. Morrison, vice president of sales and marketing for the homebuilding group of Ryland Homes, Calabasas, CA.

?We have certainly learned that this is a highly used medium and very convenient for our customers," she said.

Priority content
Ryland relies heavily on Web-based sales and marketing efforts to sell directly to home-buyers. With mobile traffic growing, the company decided to take a Web first approach in mobile because of the mobile Web?s wider device coverage.

Working with Google?s GoMo division, Ryland was able to make its site more mobile friendly by prioritizing content and including the most popular content for fast access, such as maps, photos, model details and quick move-in homes.

The Ryland Homes site also intelligently detects which device type a user is visiting from and serves up the appropriate desktop or mobile optimized Web site.

A few of the features found on Ryland?s mobile friendly site have helped drive conversions, including clickable phone numbers, location-based driving directions to communities and brief information request forms.

As a result, between March and August, Ryland experienced a 300 percent increase in mobile traffic as well as a 30 percent savings in cost-per-conversion on mobile versus desktop AdWords campaigns. The Ryland team uses locally targeted, mobile-only Google AdWords campaigns to drive site traffic.

Other features of the site include simple navigation thanks to persistent ?Back? and ?Home? buttons and a vertical scrolling design.

A "View full site" link is found at the bottom of all pages of the mobile site so that users can access the full version of the Web site.

The site also features buttons instead of links to make it easier to use.

By taking advantage of device location detection in mobile devices, the site is able to direct users to nearby Ryland communities.

Ryland is planning additional features for the mobile friendly site, such as forward-to-a-friend functionality and events information.

GoMo focuses on helping businesses go mobile by providing the necessary tools and resources for making Web sites more mobile friendly.

"Businesses need to be ready with a Web site that's optimized to be viewed on a smartphone - today, most are not,? said Google spokesman Aaron Stein.

?In a survey earlier this year, we found that only 21 percent of our largest advertisers had a mobile-optimized presence," he said. ?Ryland is a great example of how a site that's optimized for mobile will not only make your customers happy, but can help improve your overall business on mobile as well."

Final Take
Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Marketer, New York