Is Your Website Mobile-ready?

mobile phone

Notice how many people are on their phone or have it very handy? This simple observation shows why mobile marketing is now an important consideration for any local small business. Businesses that don’t have a mobile marketing strategy are losing sales to competitors who do.

Smart phones and tablets are quickly becoming the tools of choice for searching the web, reading email and accessing social media. People are spending more time on these devices and less time on PCs and laptops. Take a look at these stats:

Mobile searches for local businesses are exploding

  • The number of local searches on mobile devices quadrupled in 2012¹.
  • 33% of mobile searches and 20% of desktop searches have a local intent².
  • 40% of the estimated 30 billion annual mobile searches are local searches³.
  • eMarketer predicts that local mobile searches will exceed desktop searches in 2015.
  • People searching on mobile phones are looking for directions to a business, a phone number to call or a special offer or coupon4.
  • 40 percent will click to another search result if a site’s not mobile friendly<sup>5</sup>.

So what can small businesses do to capitalize on this trend?

1. Use a responsive website design

A responsive website automatically adjusts the format to display properly on different sized screens — from mobile phones to desktops. This avoids the need for separate mobile apps which take additional time and money to create and keep up to date. However if you need speed or enhanced features, a mobile app may be appropriate.

2. Make popular information easy to find

  • Prominently display your retail locations and phone numbers. For your phone number, use a mobile-friendly “tap-to-call” feature.
  • Make finding product information, offers and other information about your business easy to find.
  • Businesses with a strong local focus should consider including a Google map.

3. Make content more visual and text shorter

  • Avoid small text sizes that are hard to read on small screens.
  • Keep paragraphs short. Two or three sentences long.

 


References:

[1] Local Search Association
[2] SmallBizTrends
[3] Search Engine Land
[4] SmallBizTrends
[5] Icebreaker Consulting


 

One thought on “Is Your Website Mobile-ready?

  1. Allan Lee says:

    Wow, just got my website sized properly for smart phones. 100% better! very easy to read now! no more not being able to read it without scrolling all over thanks to Webmark Systems.

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