A “mobile friendly” website is no longer enough
Today’s world is mobile-first. Mobile device usage has grown year over year for the last decade with no end in sight. With more people turning to their mobile device more often and more of their web experience happening on mobile instead of desktop, it’s crucial to make sure that your website is not just “mobile friendly”. That term just means that your website will work on mobile devices, not necessarily that the experience on your website is going to be a great one.
If your website wasn’t built to be mobile-first, meaning that it was completely designed and architected to work as well (or even better) on a mobile device as it does on a desktop, then you are already losing valuable ground. Your competitors may not be investing in this activity yet, seeing as how many small business websites are not currently mobile-friendly, and how many fewer businesses indicate making them optimized for mobile is one of their priorities. The good news is that if they aren’t investing in a mobile-first website yet, you can gain a huge advantage by investing in a mobile-first website for your business.
Let’s jump into a few reasons that prove out why a mobile-first website is such an important investment for your small business to not only take advantage of today’s trends, but to position your business well into the future.
Mobile web browsing continues to increase
As mentioned earlier, mobile browsing has increased in the last decade and will continue to increase in the coming years. According to Statista, the percentage of worldwide web traffic that came from mobile devices was ~31% in early 2015 and has increased to over 50% today. This number is expected to increase so much that as much as 73% of the web browsers will access the internet solely by their smartphones by 2025. With that amount of people looking to have their mobile devices be their primary vehicle to consume content on the web, your website better be positioned to put its best foot forward, no matter the type of mobile device that person may be using.
People won’t recommend a business with a bad mobile web experience
For many small businesses, word of mouth and fostering a good reputation is the key to producing low-cost customers and keeping steady business. But if most people are going to be browsing the web via their mobile devices and you don’t provide a great experience, do you think people are going to recommend your business to their friends or colleagues? The answer is no. In fact, as many as 57% of people that have a bad experience with your website won’t recommend your business. Are you prepared to have your recommendations or positive word of mouth take a hit of almost 60% because you didn’t invest in the best possible mobile experience for your website visitors? For many small businesses, this decrease in word of mouth activity would be the difference between prospering or completely shutting down.
Emails are opened primarily on mobile devices
Email marketing is a very important part of many successful marketing strategies. And when emails are sent out, the primary action to come from that email is to visit a website to learn more. In today’s mobile-focused world, the percentage of emails that are opened on mobile devices has skyrocketed to 75% (and it’s even higher for those aged 18-24 at 81%). If two-thirds of your emails are going to be opened on a mobile device and the primary action that person will be taking is to go to a website, they better have a seamless, cohesive experience to go from your email to your website with no hiccups. This will not only increase the performance of your website, but it’ll also increase your email marketing performance. Your email contact lists will have a positive experience opening your emails and viewing your content so they’ll more likely to open your emails in the future. Win win!
People are spending more time per day on their mobile devices
Perhaps the most shocking statistic about today’s mobile crazy culture is just how much time people are spending per day on their mobile devices. An Adweek survey recently reported that people are now spending an average of FIVE HOURS PER DAY on their smartphones alone. With this huge increase in time spent on mobile devices, it’s a simple play in probability that your website has a great chance to be discovered or visited on a mobile device. The number of hours spent on mobile devices is projected to increase in the future so the importance of your website being mobile optimized continues to increase.
Mobile payments are being widely adopted by young people
As your business continues to find its place in the market and becomes more established, younger generations continue to get older and start to make more buying decisions. Younger people are the highest adopters of most mobile technology - including mobile payments. Studies indicate that 91% of all millennials have made mobile payments before and 42% of those aged under 35 have a credit or debit card attached to a digital wallet. If your website is optimized for mobile, you’ll be able to integrate payments and collect revenue from those that are looking to spend their money through their digital wallets and mobile devices.
There are a host of reasons why having your website built in a mobile-first fashion is going to be beneficial to your business both right now and for years to come, but the reasons listed above are some of the most clear cut reasons we can think of. And at Moby, we’re happy to help design and build a new site from the ground up, or revamp and improve an existing website you have to make it not just mobile-friendly, but built for mobile and ready to make your mobile experience the best it can be. If you’re interested in future-proofing your website by investing in your mobile experience, reach out for our team. We’d love to chat!