If you recently ran your website through Mobile Grader, you may have been surprised to find a lower score than you were expecting. But don’t worry!

Believe it or not, there’s a good chance you shouldn’t be aiming for a score above 80. Unless you’re looking to achieve the spartan, content-less perfection of Google’s homepage, your grade may be right where you need it to be.

70 or above is great news

As a marketer, it’s important to note that a mobile grade only tells one part of the story. Speed is important in mobile, and so is the optimization of code so that visitors can easily view your site on a mobile device. But engagement is just as crucial.

You may want to grab your visitors with compelling images, content, special offers, access to social media interactions, and other methods of engagement.  Maybe you have some whitepapers available for download, or a really great blog feed. All of these materials are necessary to build your brand image and delight your visitors – but they’re also going to drop your Mobile Grader score.

It’s a balance you’ll need to strike for yourself, just remember that your mobile site should still download quickly, or you may lose those visitors to impatience.

Keep the User In Mind

Mashable, and other news-focused mobile sites, may receive lower scores because of their prevalent use of images. This does not mean that Mashable and other news sites have poor mobile experiences. (In fact, Mashable’s mobile website is pretty great!) Sites like these are great examples of good sites with “bad” scores.

Let’s flip this around and look at a “bad” site with a great Mobile Grader score…

Let’s say “Sally’s Shell Store” (located by the sea shore) has a one-page mobile site. The only content on that page is a 1.7KB image of Sally, a one-paragraph description of her shell selection, and the store’s contact information. Sally’s website scores a 98 on Mobile Grader, a spectacular grade by any standards. However, what do we really learn about Sally and her business from this site? What do her shells look like? Is there a map to her sea shore location? Her shells go unsold.

Be True To Your Brand

Remember to always keep the end-user in mind – keep the website healthy using Mobile Grader recommendations, but don’t sacrifice the things that make your mobile site a brand ambassador and a conversion engine.

We hope this sheds a little more light on your Mobile Grader Score. If you’re curious to learn the technical details of your grade, you can read all about the scoring process in this recent blog post by Griffin Mahoney, the architect of Mobile Grader.