Saturday, February 04, 2012

Is Your Small Business Website Mobile Ready?

Thirty eight Million, 38,000,000 folks bought an iPhone in Apple's 4th quarter of 2011. NO ONE expects this rate to slow down. Android has similar stats. 30% of all cell phones in use at the end of 2011 were smart phones with a projection that more than half will be smart phones by the end of 2012. My own observation is that 15% - 25% of searches for local businesses are not coming from mobile devices. An extrapolation of the ownership stats above would suggest that 25% - 45% of all searches for local businesses will occur on smart phones - not Computers - by the end of 2012.

How does your website look on a phone? Doesn't take long to figure this out. You either own one yourself or your spouse or probably your oldest kid does. Don't be shy. Check your website out on the phone. Is that how you want to be represented? Now do something even scarier, do a search for your keyword and city. See what happens. Good result? HMMMM. Now, if you don't have an iPhone, find someone who does. Ask them to ask Siri to search for your kind of business and see what pops up. Looking good?

You need a mobile website. They aren't expensive. You may need a mobile app. They can be expensive, but sometimes they are not too bad. You need to be found on a mobile search by text or Siri. If you aren't doing these things and your competitor is, it is going to be a rough year for you. The cost of getting all of this done is probably under $5000 total, and you can work on it over the next 5 months at $1000 a month. That may seem like a lot. Unless your sales drop by $3000 a month due to not being mobile.

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