Why Should You Leverage Your Site For Mobile Traffic?

If your site is not optimized for mobile traffic then you may be throwing away a boatload of money. If you can afford to have a SEO strategy, social media strategy, content marketing strategy then you cannot afford not to have a mobile traffic strategy.

Here are some stats to prove my point (*)

• 77% of smartphone users search the internet
• 97% of those who search the internet look for local information
• 68% of smartphone consumers use their phones to help with shopping. They use it for comparing prices, finding out more about retailers etc.
• 42% of smartphone shoppers make a purchase.
• 71% search on their phones because of an ad exposure, whether from traditional media (68%) to online ads (18%) to mobile ads (27%)
• 82% notice mobile ads, especially mobile display ads and a third notice mobile search ads
• Half of those who see a mobile ad take action, with 35% visiting a website and 42% making a purchase
• 84% of these users take action within a day, indicating these are immediate information needs
• 70% have contacted a business, with 61% calling and 59% visiting the local business

How much traffic goes mobile?

A while ago Google released world’s most popular mobile OS (Android). They made it intuitive, easy to use and rich with features. Now we know the reason. Paid search revenue on mobile has witnessed a tremendous growth and now accounts for 19% of its US ad revenue. If the trend continues Google’s mobile search revenue will account for 30% of its US ad revenues and desktop revenues will fall by 43%.

Brightedge mobileshare report states that US smartphone adoption grew by 30% in 2012 and is still going strong. By the end of 2012, 50% of all internet traffic was mobile traffic.

If your site is well optimized for mobile web browsers and has options like FaceBook login then people will be prompted to make purchases with their handsets.

People are using mobile for more and more local searches and when people are searching local, it means that the need is immediate.

Google has also announced that sites that provide a bad mobile web experience may not be ranked that well.

If you own a local business or any business for that matter optimizing your site for a rich mobile user experience will be a fantastic idea. Most don’t do it because they have no idea of how much traffic and sales they are losing by not doing anything about it.

(*) Here’s an infographic, courtesy of MarketingExchange.com about mobile search.

How can you leverage mobile traffic for your success?

There are a few simple things that can be done to leverage mobile traffic.

1. Build an app for your local business to accept payments digitally. This way people near to you can pay you without being bothered about not having cash at hand.

Or use something that already does that. The Levelup app has helped over 5000 businesses to achieve this cashless form of payment.

2. Responsive design: It doesn’t matter whether your site is on WordPress, Joomla or even the Blogger platform. What matters is whether you use a responsive design that caters to everyone. Responsive themes are available that automatically adapt to any screen dimensions be it mobile or desktop.

The choice is neither difficult to make nor very expensive, the call is yours.

3. Reduce 404 errors when mobile users land on a page, redirects and heavy scripts that make load time a pain. While Google says that mobile page load speed is not a more important factor while ranking sites on mobile search, would you wait 5 minutes for a site to load up on your mobile.

I won’t and I could be your customer.