Mobiles and smart-phones are changing the way businesses market their products and services. If you're skeptical, the following statistics can act as an eye-opener:
- Of the 7 billion people on earth, 4.2 billion possess a toothbrush while 5.1 billion have a cell phone.
- As compared to traditional coupons, the redemption rate of mobile coupons is 10 times more.
- Out of Facebook’s 900 million monthly users, 44% access the site on their phones; these people are 2 times as active on Facebook as their non-mobile using counterparts;
- Of the 156 million users of Twitter, 50% use Twitter Mobile;
- By 2016, 15.2% of worldwide online ad spend will be attributed to mobile marketing;
- While a lost wallet is reported within 26 hours on an average, a lost phone is reported in just 68 minutes;
- It takes almost a month for 70% of online searches to trigger a result, while it takes just an hour for 70% of all mobile searches to result in action;
- Out of every 10 mobile searches, 9 lead to action; almost 50% of such action leads to a purchase;
- As compared to traditional barcodes, mobile tags offer more product information like comparison of shopping offers etc;
- By 2012, mobile internet would surpass desktop internet usage.
By changing the dynamics of marketing, mobile marketing is gaining popularity with every passing day. Apart from giving you access to a targeted audience in a systematic way, it also helps in encouraging a higher response rate, and immediate responses, which other marketing methods can hardly match. So, it pays to have a mobile-friendly website to tap into this huge audience.
How to tell if your website is mobile-friendly
A great tool is the W3C mobileOK Checker that tests a web page to verify its level of mobile-friendliness. You can also use Google's GoMo site, which can show you how your existing site looks on a mobile device or smartphone. This site even gives a report on what’s working and what’s not, apart from providing some suggestions on how you can do better. Several resources are also on offer here, which you can use to build a mobile-friendly website.
There are many other tools online, some of which are free while some others may be paid, which let you check your website’s mobile compatibility.
Why it makes a difference:
- 75% of customers prefer a mobile-friendly site
- 60% of users expect a mobile-friendly website to load in 3 seconds or less
- Over 50% of users won’t recommend doing a business with a bad mobile site
All these data and figures show that even when you don’t think you need a mobile-friendly website, you could, in fact, be encouraging customers to go elsewhere (perhaps to your competitors) without one. To stop losing customers and use the power of mobile marketing to the optimum, you should get a mobile site built today!
What to do if your site isn't mobile-friendly?
To benefit from mobile marketing, it isn’t enough to devote just 1% of your company’s budget to create a mobile friendly site. You should remember that the rules for SEO, PPC etc are different for mobile-friendly websites. So, if your site doesn’t belong to the mobile-friendly category, you would need to devote significant resources for creating one and making your mobile presence felt. However, if it’s not possible to do it all at one go, you may start conservatively. Creating a mobile text-back campaign or a mobile-friendly landing page are good ways to judge how your target clientele responds to them before overhauling your site completely.
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