The 2014 Effective Mobile Marketing Awards Ceremony takes place just over a month from now on 27 November in London. Every day between now and then, we’ll be previewing the finalists in each of the 26 categories, starting today with the Most Effective Mobile or Responsive Site. There are five contenders in this category, let’s take a closer look at each.

Folk – Finisterre Cold Water Surf
Folk was tasked with re-engineering Finisterre’s successful Magento Community v1.4 store, addressing a number of pain points, improving SEO credentials, and making it fully responsive and adaptive. At the same time, the challenge was to seamlessly transfer the brand story and message to mobile, without losing out on any functionality.

Folk’s designers crafted a mobile site using mobile-first best practices, which maintained maximum functionality, and retained the minimal vibe and brand integrity of Finisterre. It’s a great-looking, easy-to-navigate site, and since it went live, Finisterre has seen marked improvements in conversion rates on mobile, tablet and desktop.

Accenture – Accenture
Accenture had long provided a mobile-optimized version of accenture.com to serve the growing number of visitors accessing the site from a mobile device. However, this mobile-optimized version comprised only 11 pages, and provided none of the depth of information seen on the PC version of the website.

By contrast, the new mobile site delivers more than 3,000 pages of high-level information focused on showcasing the breadth and depth of the company’s services and industries. Mobile visitors can easily scan information on Accenture’s capabilities and offerings directly from their phones, and quickly scan selected client success stories and research insights. The mobile-optimized site now comprises more than 5 per cent of the total page views on Accenture’s global website.

Ampersand – Harvey Nichols Making Luxury Mobile
Harvey Nichols re-launched its ecommerce website on Magento Enterprise as part of a larger multichannel strategy earlier this year. The new mobile site, designed in-house and built by Ampersand Commerce, serves the needs of the modern mobile shopper, offering a fully integrated content-led site, dynamic customer account area, real-time stock information and innovative delivery methods.

As the brief placed great emphasis on the customer, the new mobile site places increased emphasis on content merchandising and social media interaction, which serves to further enhance the integrated experience. Customers can share products and content, driving traffic and increasing brand loyalty. Most importantly, the mobile site is designed to showcase the luxury products first and foremost, while remaining both accessible and interactive.

Since re-launch, customers have responded positively and loudly on social media and commercially with increased traffic across different devices as well as a significant increase in average order value and a large jump in conversion on mobile.

9xb – WYG
Worldwide engineering consultancy WYG worked with full service digital agency 9xb.com to develop a fresh and dynamic online image to the global business community. After spending 12 months developing a clear positioning and tone of voice for its organisation, WYG wanted a website that reflected the 21st century face of the business.

9xb was chosen after a comprehensive competitive pitch and developed an innovative creative strategy to deliver an interactive online brand presence for a well-established corporate company operating on a global scale.

The high impact, bright and colourful creative design projects a modern brand for WYG and communicates the things that matter to WYG’s clients. It’s a multinational site, consolidating multiple local websites into one global brand, without losing the local feel.
Since launch, average weekly traffic is up 39 per cent, total page views have doubled, time on site is up 38 per cent, and pages viewed per visit are up 42 per cent.

Isbank
Isbank’s responsive website offers enhanced user experience, easy navigation, new design and visuals, and social media integration. The navigation enables uses to easily access key content such as financial data, a loan calculator, and financial and economic news.
Since the new site launched in April, Isbank has seen an increase in visits to the site, together with a decrease in bounces and an increase in mobile page views.

The Effective Mobile Marketing Awards Ceremony takes place in London on 27 November. You can book your place here. To get involved with the Awards as a Partner, contact john.owen@wearedotmedia.com