Sarah Buckner - Bayshore Solutions Account Associate
By: Sarah Buckner – Bayshore Solutions Emarketing Team
If you’re asking yourself “Do I really need a mobile website?”, the answer is YES!
25% of searches are coming from mobile devices; if you don’t have a mobile website, you’re missing the boat – big time. Your beautifully-designed desktop site just isn’t going to cut it. Desktop sites don’t always translate well onto the mobile screen – content becomes hard to read and links become too small to navigate through the site easily. Mobile websites need to be simple, straight-forward, and easy to navigate with a finger.
To give you an idea of the importance of a mobile site, here are some facts that might surprise you:
- eMarketer estimates that there will be 115.8 million smartphone users in the US by the end of 2012, with that number growing to 176.3 million by 2015
- 47% of smartphone owners rely on mobile websites to find out more information about a product and 36% use their phones to read product reviews on retail websites
- 57% of customers would not recommend a business with a bad mobile site
- 40% of customers would even go to a competitor with a better mobile experience
When developing a mobile website strategy, it’s important to keep in mind the intent of your mobile visitor. It is likely that your mobile visitor is looking for different information than your desktop visitor. Mobile searchers tend to use shorter keywords, and are looking for location-based, and/or time-sensitive information.
For example, let’s say you own a restaurant and have a great desktop site with tons of information on how you started, locations, menus, nutrition information, gift cards, specials, events, catering, etc. This is all excellent information to have on your website to share with your customers, but might be too much for a mobile visitor to sort through. Most likely a mobile visitor wants to find a location near them, make a reservation, view the menu, or place an online order. If that is the case, make sure this information is front-and-center on your mobile site, making it as easy as possible for your customer to get what they need.
Instead of trying to condense your whole desktop site into a mobile site, figure out what is most important and relevant to the mobile visitor and make that the primary focus of your mobile site. In doing so, you’ll probably find that your website will convert better because you have made it so much easier for them to find what they were looking for.
Sarah Buckner is an Account Associate at Bayshore Solutions—a Tampa Web Design, Web Development, and Internet Marketing Company.