Small to medium sized businesses that do not adapt to the current mobile environment will probably not survive, taking down the economy with them. Australia’s digital future is clearly not only set to exist in the cloud, but on mobile.
Smartphone penetration is very evidently on the rise, and according to the latest Google research only made available to Google partners, 74% of users don’t leave home without it. However, an overwhelming 98% of respondents also use their smartphones at home.
Importantly, the research shows that 86% of smartphone users have used their phone to look for local information, 48% of them on a weekly basis, and of those people, 88% have taken action as a result.
Unfortunately, most businesses do not yet realise the power of mobile, and that a mobile website could be their most powerful marketing tool, due to their high conversion rate. By 2015, mobile search is set to overtake desktop, and 94% of respondents have researched a product or service on their phone, with 33% then purchasing it via their computer and 29% offline.
Technology is, however, now making it possible for purchases to be made easily via mobile. Twenty-eight percent of respondents have purchased a product or service using their smartphone. Smartphone users tend to be frequent buyers, with 59% making mobile purchases at least once a month.
All businesses should have a mobile website to take advantage of these customers. People search differently via mobile than they do on their desktop, with 59% only looking at the first page of search results when conducting a search on their smartphone.
Mobile sites are different to normal websites, being simplified versions of a website that contain the necessary information in a format suitable for a mobile phone, eliminating the need for scrolling to get a complete page view. Also, Flash is best avoided as it is not supported by iPhones.