If your marketing budget is already tight, you might be tempted to forgo the expense of creating a special mobile website catering to people who love to browse the web on their smartphones or tablets. This is a mistake! In today’s increasingly connected society, not having a mobile web presence puts you at a significant disadvantage when it comes to landing potential clients. Here’s why you simply can’t afford not to have a mobile website.
Your Current Site Won’t Satisfy Mobile Browsers
If you’ve never viewed your company’s website through a mobile device, stop reading this and try it right now. It looks awful, right? Text-heavy pages overwhelm your device’s small screen, the site navigation gets bumped out of position, and it’s a huge struggle to locate the information you need. Now imagine you’re a potential customer. How long are you going to mess with this clunky site before giving up? Research commissioned by Google found that 61 percent of mobile device users will spend no more than 5 seconds on sites that aren’t mobile-friendly. If your site doesn’t satisfy them in those first 5 seconds, you’ve just lost a potential sale. Fortunately, creating a mobile version of your website is fast and easy. All it takes is a little tweaking, and you’ll have a site that can deliver a great mobile browsing experience.
Mobile is More Popular than Ever
With improved wireless data service for smartphones and one third of American adults now owning tablets, people are using their mobile devices more than ever. According to data from Stat Counter, global mobile web traffic has been roughly doubling each year since 2009. If you want to capture a share of this traffic, you must have a user-friendly mobile website. This holds true even if you are seeing tons of sales from your traditional website. Google has found that a whopping 90 percent of consumers now use more than one device to complete a transaction, most commonly initiating a search on their mobile device and then following up later on their computer.
Many Marketing Campaigns Invite Mobile Responses
If you’re currently running any sort of social media marketing campaign, you need to have a mobile website set up to accommodate the responses to that campaign. For example, let’s say you’re running a campaign encouraging people to “like” your Facebook page in exchange for a special coupon code to use on your website. People using Facebook from a mobile device won’t be happy if they’re expected to navigate a clunky traditional website on their smartphone in order to redeem the coupon! They will probably just give up, and you’ll lose a sale. But if you provide them with a special mobile site, they will find it much more tempting to make a purchase using their coupon.
Mobile Devices Drive Impulse Purchases
When browsing the web on their smartphones, consumers seem poised to make spur-of-the-moment purchasing decisions. Consumers considered over 80 percent of mobile purchases to be spontaneous decisions, compared to just 58 percent of purchases made from computers. If you want your products and services to be available to more consumers right as they’re on the verge of a spontaneous purchasing decision, you need a mobile website.
You Must Beat Your Competition to the Mobile Market
Remember, the web is all about convenience. This is even more true when it comes to surfing the web through mobile devices. If customers find your website difficult to view on their smartphone or tablet, they will just head to the competition. You can’t rely on loyalty to save you either—50 percent of consumers said that they would turn away from a company they already loved if they didn’t have a mobile website. You don’t want to be the one driving customers into the arms of your competition. Instead, you want to create a stellar mobile website, which will not only help retain your own customers, but also capture mobile customers who are unsatisfied with your competitors.
So do you really need a mobile web presence? Consider all the ways that delivering an outstanding mobile experience can help you capture more customers and make more sales, and weigh that against the few measly dollars you’ll save by not creating a mobile website. The answer should be obvious!