5 Reasons Why Mobile Is Important For Small Businesses
As smartphones continue their ever-widening reach into our world, and small businesses are overwhelmed by the multitudes of services offering quick mobile websites and digital marketing fixes, find out why mobile is not only important but a necessity your company.
Your Customers Expect It
At this point it is not optional to have a mobile optimized website, period. Whether the design is responsive, a mobile version, or an app makes less of a difference than there being one at all. In fact in 2015 for the first time ever, mobile internet use surpassed desktop internet use. This means that customers are looking for you on their smartphones, and it is up to you to cater their experience. And as our ubiquitous internet savvy phones morph and connect with wearables like Apple watches, Fitbits, and Google Glasses, customers also expect it all to work as seamlessly as possible.
It’s About How They Engage Not Which Technology They Use
One of the most important aspects to consider is to think about how your consumer lives their life and how your product or service features in that mix. Be specific and collect some data; gather a group of your friends and customer together and watch their behavior on your mobile site. Ask them what they struggled with, and what they wished the experience was like. Be receptive to their answers and try out changes and iterations that will affect these results. Changing pixels and Call To Actions (CTAs) are cheap, and may lead to drastic results, so don’t be afraid to try different looks and then measure their response. Also, take the time to strategize: think about exactly you want your user to do from their mobile device. Is the primary action to call you? To place an order? To sign up for your newsletter? Pick the CTA that matter the most to you and highlight the crap out of it.
Because Speed is King
The whole idea of mobile and smartphones is that we want our information now. That means we don’t want to wait and will go elsewhere to get it in an instant.
According to the web research firm Gomez, 74% of consumers will wait only 5 seconds for a web page to load on their mobile device before abandoning the site.
Since speed is king, this mean you should look to strip your mobile site of extraneous images and trim page load times wherever possible. If you have responsive site, this means paying special attention to optimizing uploaded images to your main site, using proper media queries, flexible layouts (like grids), and removing non-essential content.
Tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, GT Metrix, or Webpage Test can help your web developer find and isolate which items might be causing your site to lag and fix the issue. By using a service like Hotjar you can also can tell you exactly what you customers are clicking on and where on your mobile site gets traffic.
You Need to Enhance The Experience
The very fact that people carry a location-tracking device around in their pockets at all times is amazing resource for small businesses. By using your customer’s location to enhance the their experience, it’s a win for both you and them. Whether it’s a simple check-in offer on Yelp, Facebook, or Foursquare; a Groupon or Living social deal; location aware website fields; or customized SMS (text) messaging outreach, each can help your customers feel appreciated and increase loyalty.
Location awareness also starts by making sure your local listings, directories, and local citations are up-to-date with your most current info. All your listings online, from Google Maps, Bing, Yellow Pages, Facebook, or LinkedIn must have the same information, so as not to confuse your customer and search engines.
Remember To Be Holistically Mobile
Your mobile website is really just the tip of the iceberg as well. Making sure all your business’s digital communication also works and looks great on mobile is also key. For instance, have you made your email newsletters smartphone-friendly? Is your email and email signature displaying right on mobile devices? Are your social media profiles images optimized for those small screens? Do any videos or other embedded info on your site display right? Take the time to look your other customers’ communications and adjust them for the mobile world.