More and More Mobile Surfers
More and More Mobile Surfers 'Get Your Site Looking Sweet'
The time of the mobile web is upon us. No longer will people spend their time sitting in front of a cumbersome monitor, but will instead opt to view the internet via their mobile devices. Research suggests that mobile internet traffic will overtake desktop usage worldwide as early as 2016. Within the UK, this may occur even faster. The growing versatility of mobile devices has become so advanced that it only makes sense that smartphone users would opt to do their shopping from their handheld. For instance, the inclusion of mobile tags offer the ability for a more comprehensive comparison shopping, thus enhancing the buyer's experience. This all means that site owners need to begin optimizing their pages for mobile traffic. Without sites being properly optimized, they will undoubtedly miss out on A LOT of web traffic from potential consumers. This is not something that should be done in a year or two, mobile traffic and subsequently, mobile commerce, is rising by the day right NOW.
Get Optimized
On average, residents within the UK spend over 2.7 hours per day socializing on the phone, tablet, or other handheld mobile device. That is over one third the amount of time they spend sleeping and over twice as long as the average person spends eating. This is a serious amount of time that often translates to internet usage. A report posted by a marketing firm known as BiaKelsey, found that as many 91% of small to medium sized businesses are not optimized for mobile users. Imagine missing out on sales to your site day after day because hundreds, if not thousands of users couldn't access your site through their mobile device. How much lost revenue do you think that would account for?
Mobile Web – SEO
One significant factor that is often overlooked when it pertains to the mobile web is SEO. Since so few sites are actually optimized, the competition for rankings within search engines is virtually nonexistent. It was mentioned prior how much traffic the mobile web was receiving. Unless a site is fully optimized, Google will not give them a high mobile ranking. After all, Google is all about increasing the user experience. It wouldn't make sense for them to offer high rankings to sites where the user couldn't easily navigate because they were not set up for mobile use. That means that funneling traffic to your site from mobile sources may actually end up being far more lucrative if efforts were focused on mobile users. All of that traffic must go somewhere, why not to your site?
Profit to be made!
The UK broadband operator Plusnet reported a case study of their experiment with a Responsive (mobile friendly) theme. The new theme was expected to do well, but the senior advisors at Plusnet were not ready for how successful it truly was. With a new, mobile friendly theme, Plusnet's traffic literally DOUBLED. Not just that, but sales from mobile devices and tablets increased by a factor of 10!
It is impossible to say that a business is operating at its maximum potential without being optimized for mobile use. There is money being made by those that have been keen enough to convert to a Responsive theme. There are also small fortunes being left on the table by those that are too stubborn to see the truth. The time of desktop internet usage will soon be at an end. All hail the new king of online surfing, the mobile device.
