If Your Website Isn’t Mobile-Friendly, You’re Hemorrhaging Customers (And Money)
You simply can’t afford to make it harder for customers to buy your products or services. Unfortunately, many local businesses aren’t making things easy when it comes to their websites. As more and more customers are trying to find nearby businesses on their mobile devices (according to Google, 1 in 3 searches are for local information) companies are still running antiquated sites that look dreadful (let’s face it) on smartphones and tablets, if you can see them at all!
Are you chasing away customers?
At first blush, this may seem like a small problem. It’s not, unfortunately. As the folks at MarketingVOX recently pointed out, there are very real financial penalties for having a mobile-unfriendly website. As increasingly more consumers use mobile devices to access the internet, the penalties are getting stronger. In a recent post, MarketingVOX outlined research from Google showing that:
- A majority—61 percent—of consumers say that they’ll leave a website if it’s not optimized for small touch screens.
- A whopping 96 percent of consumers say they’ve had bad experiences on websites that were not designed for non-desktop screens.
- 50 percent of respondents said that even if they liked a business, they’d be less inclined to buy in the future if the business’s website isn’t mobile friendly.
Those are startling statistics. Here’s the silver lining: Nearly 3/4 say that they’re more likely to return to a mobile-friendly website. So your mission is clear…
What you must do: Optimize for mobile!
What does this really mean for the business owner? That maintaining a mobile-friendly website is critical—and becoming even more so. Look around you: You’ll see a steady stream of consumers browsing the web on phones, iPads, Nooks, and Kindles. And this is a movement that’s hardly slowing. Tablets remain hot sellers, and an increasing number of consumers do much of their web surfing and social media tasks through mobile devices. According to a joint Google/Ipsos study, after consumers find a business via mobile, 61% say they make a phone call and 59% say they actually go to the business! The message is clear: If you make a bad impression, if your business’s website looks cramped, cluttered, or illegible when viewed on a tablet or smartphone, you have the real risk of driving potential customers towards your competitors!
