6 Reasons Why Your Website Needs to Be Mobile-Friendly

More and more businesses are creating mobile-friendly websites with every passing day. Why? Because they have to! Today it is requisite that businesses - large, medium and small - have a mobile-friendly website and/or a mobile app. More than half of the total population in the United States owns a smart phone. And 73.4% of them used their smart phone to access the internet in 2013. By 2017, 90% of smart phone owners around the world will access information about your business on the internet via a mobile device (statista.com). So let's take a look at some of the reasons why your business' website needs to be mobile-friendly.

• Access: Mobile-friendly websites allow potential customers to access your company’s information, products and services anytime, anywhere and at their own convenience. Accessibility is the key for your business to succeed.
• Convenience: Mobile-friendly websites are convenient for mobile phone users, and especially so for smart phone users. Do the math: if your website is mobile-friendly, more people will access it which will increase click-through and conversion rates for your business. Nowadays people browse, shop, look for restaurant and hotel reviews and make reservations via their smart phones. Businesses with mobile-friendly websites will steadily progress because they will be seen and not avoided. Smart phone users will not squint to view your website when your competition provides them with one that is mobile-friendly.
• Social Media is King: In July of 2013, 93 million users accessed the social network Facebook via browser on their smart phone. 70% of Facebook users in the United States now access that social channel via their smart phones - not on a desktop computer. Some 62% of respondents say Facebook is the most useful social network for researching small businesses before purchasing (godigitalmarketing.com). If smart phone users end up at your website via a link on your Facebook page, TripAdvisor, Twitter, etc., you better be darn sure your website is mobile-friendly.
• Mobile SEO: Google has taken a strong stance on mobile SEO, announcing there will be demotions if your site is not mobile-friendly or is misconfigured when it comes to being mobile-friendly. Google said the demotion will only impact mobile, smart phone friendly, search results and only impact web pages that are not smart phone friendly or misconfigured when it comes to being smartphone friendly. No explanation needs to be offered here. If you don't rank in mobile search, you're out of business because your competition will be seen and you won't.
• Sales: Mobile friendly business sites see more sales, a thicker bottom line. As of 4th quarter 2013, it was found that 34 percent of internet users worldwide used their mobile devices to research products or services they intended to purchase (statista.com). In 2013, U.S. B2C (Business to Consumer) e-commerce sales amounted to 58.5 billion US dollars and are projected to almost reach 200 billion U.S. dollars in 2018 (statista.com). So you need to ask yourself as a business owner, "Do I want to be a part of the trend?" The answer is a resonating, "YES!"
• Mobile Internet is the New Internet: Mobile devices accounted for 55% of Internet usage in the United States in January, 2014. Apps made up 47% of Internet traffic and 8% of traffic came from mobile browsers, according to data from comScore. Although total Internet usage on mobile devices has previously exceeded that on PCs, this is the first time it's happened for app usage alone. The shift follows a free fall in PC sales, which suffered their worst decline in history in 2013.

So as you can see, there's a skyrocketing trend toward more and more people using their mobile devices to access the internet and your business' website. Once they arrive at your website, they won't want to struggle with a site if its unreadable, unnavigable or complicated. It is imperative that your mobile-friendly business website be simple, intuitive, fast-loading and easy to navigate. The desktop is fading in terms of marketing your business online. As a business owner you need to throw old notions out the window and adapt to the new realities of how people are using the internet to find out about you, what your business has to offer and why they should procure your products and/or services.

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