NETMUMS @Netmums MOVES TO RESPONSIVE WEBSITE
Netmums has unveiled a brand-new look for its parenting portal – launching a responsive netmums.com website to meet the surge in mobile and tablet visits from its six million unique users each month.
71% of visits to No1 parenting site now via mobile or tablet
• Netmums reports 36% rise in mobile/tablet views in two years
• Busy ‘on the go’ lives mean desktop visits drop by over 50%
• Advertisers can now book one cross-platform campaign
• Responsive site expected to increase traffic by 20%
The UK’s No1 parenting site – which has 1.7m registered members – has spent nine months and more than £100,000 developing the site in-house after identifying a huge shift in the way its pages are now visited.
Netmums’ founders believe users and advertisers will reap the benefit from the site – now future-proofed to automatically adapt to the screen size of whatever device it is viewed on. It also has a new modern and fresher feel.
Founder Siobhan Freegard says: “We believe a move to responsive design is the only way sites will survive and thrive. In 2010, Morgan Stanley predicted mobile users would surpass desktop within five years but our members are mostly young parents ahead of the technology curve so we’ve seen it happen far faster.
“Half of our visits already come from mobile and one in five from tablets. The pace of that change is certain to increase even faster over the next 12 months.”
Mobile device traffic
Since March 2012, desktop views to Netmums have dropped from 65% to 29% while mobile device traffic has increased from 27% for phones and 8% for tablets to 51% and 20% respectively in March 2014. This has come alongside a massive surge in traffic generally with total visits rising to nearly 12 million (March 2014) from around 5.5 million in the corresponding March two years ago.
Siobhan adds: “There’s no doubt a significantly large part of our growth is down to the huge take-up of smartphones and tablets by our readership. The mums – and dads – who read our site lead such busy lives and want a seamless way to view us with no navigation difficulties or confused designs on different platforms.
“Our new responsive layout provides speed and convenience for the reader and advertisers benefit from our investment to stay up-to-date with the latest trends.
“The responsive design means advertisers no longer have to create multiple ad versions. They can now make one booking for X number of impressions with no need for separate mobile, desktop and tablet campaigns. The right formula is one customer = multiple devices = one message and our new site can deliver that.”
Netmums has identified other benefits from responsive design. Its content team can now remove workflow duplication, which saves time from not uploading separate versions of the same articles. Instead this time can be put into offering more stories, advice and campaigns.
Siobhan says: “The responsive site is expected to increase traffic over all by around 20%. Comments and interaction increase exponentially with increased traffic and a good user experience. It creates an online virtuous circle.
“We know this is the future and we believe it will cement our position against our competitors who are yet to catch up. Many big names in the wider mainstream media are also still adopting a confused second-class strategy for mobile visits.”
She adds: “Google has also suggested websites with a responsive site will do better in SEO by being easier to index while Google’s Think Insights research showed users who have a positive experience with a mobile website are 67% more likely to buy a product or use a service.
“While some publishers can be nervous and prefer to wait for feedback or focus groups, with technology decisions it is often about trying to figure out what users want before they know it themselves.
“We are breaking new ground and therefore it is rarely about evidence-based decisions. Sites that don’t upgrade are soon going to look rather stale and old fashioned. Not putting users at the heart of what you do is the worst thing you can do as a publisher online.”
Head of Technology Jono Brain and his team built the responsive site in-house. They wanted to remove the barriers posed by offering apps and separate mobile versions, including matching up to different screen sizes, operating systems and devices.
Netmums is Britain’s biggest parenting site with 1.7 million members and around 1.5 million unique users each week. Founded in 2000, it offers unrivalled support though a unique network of 151 local websites and 300 national groups for mums to meet offline, alongside 2,300 handpicked bloggers covering the most topical family-focused content on the web. Netmums is also the only parenting site to provide professional round-the-clock care to its users.
Dubbed ‘the emergency service for mums’, each year more than 3.5million parents are helped by Netmums’ specially trained teams of parenting experts, including staff from Relate, Women’s Aid and the Family Rights Group. The site also provides free one-to-one support for more than 30,000 of the UK’s most vulnerable mums each year. The Netmums founders were recently awarded OBEs in recognition of their Services to Families.
