The popularity of smartphones and tablets has seen an increase in the number of people that are accessing the Internet on mobile devices. Almost two-thirds of all mobile phones that were purchased in the U.S. in 2011 were smartphones, and there are now 98 million smartphone subscribers¹, which indicates that the trend is only going to continue to grow. It is estimated that mobile access to the Internet will surpass landline connections in the next year² or so, which makes having a mobile friendly Internet marketing strategy a vital promotional tool for all businesses now. This is especially important for small business web design because these companies are more likely to rely on local foot traffic for their revenue.

Using the Internet to find the businesses that sell the products that we want has become a regular part of the purchasing process for over half of consumers³ and mobile users are more likely to use their devices to find local businesses, with as many as 64% using them for that purpose. Mobile customers have been shown to spend as much as 48% more⁴ than other consumers, making them an important target market. Because mobile searches only return results that are viewable on the device, if your small business web design isn’t mobile friendly you could be missing out on half of your potential customers.

These mobile shoppers are quite likely to use their devices to do research on a product to compare products and prices or to find what they are looking for, even while they are in your store. This means that small business web design that is compatible with mobile devices stands the best chance of attracting new, local customers who are already looking for a product and who are in a spending mindset.

Small Business Web Design

Reading messages remains one of the most common activities that is performed on mobile devices, making e-mail and SMS marketing a potentially productive promotional tool. This can be especially so for retailers, restaurants and other businesses relying on foot traffic, as it makes it possible to get their marketing message to their prospective customers while they are out and about. The personal nature of messages on someone’s phone makes it more likely that they will read them than people on their PCs, who are more likely to filter out advertising messages as a matter of course.

Taken together, this all creates an image of a potentially lucrative marketing opportunity for those businesses that can get it right. The first prerequisite is to have a website that can be displayed on a range of mobile devices, and there are now a number of options available including separate websites formatted for mobile devices and reactive web design that tailors the user’s experience to suit their device. However it is done, using mobile friendly small business web designis only going to become more important as the use of smartphones and tablets continues to increase and more consumers research the products and services that they are looking for on the fly.

References:

1. comscore 2012 Mobile Future in Focus Whitepaper, 2012

2. goo.gl/HDpUO

3. Online Product Research, Pew Research Center, 2010

4. 5th Annual 15miles/Localeze Local Search Usage Study, comScore, 2012