Why Mobile Is More Important Than You Thought

Mobile is not the fad you once thought it was. I heard Stephanie Tilenius from Google speak at a conference back in 2010, and she said then that Google now does all things through the lens of mobile. Their entire strategy is focused on mobile because we live in a world where everyone is tethered to their phones (and increasingly, smartphones).

Take a look at these eye-opening statistics:

• According to Comscore, mobile Internet usage is projected to overtake desktop Internet usage by 2014.
• 1.08 billion of the planet’s 4 billion mobile phones are smartphones, and 3.05 billion are SMS-enabled, meaning they can send and receive text messages. (Source: Microsoft Tag)
• If a mobile site didn’t work properly the first time they visited, 46% of visitors are not likely to return. (Source: Gomez)
• We want it now: 71% of mobile browsers expect web pages to load on their mobile devices almost as quickly as or faster than website pages load on their desktop computers. (Source: Gomez)
• We’re looking locally: 50% of local searches are done on mobile devices. (Source: Mashableinfographic, Mobile by the Numbers)
• Only 19% of US e-commerce sites have an app for mobile commerce, so you have the opportunity to get ahead of the pack.
• We’re social: 91% of mobile web usage is for social connectivity, versus only 79% on desktops. (Source: Microsoft Tag)
• If all US mobile time online were represented as one hour, 25 minutes of that hour would be used for email. (Source: Return Path)

The bottom line: Make sure your website is built with options for mobile users and loads super-fast. Responsive web design can help you achieve some consistency across channels and is a good reasonably low-effort option for many companies. Others will want to create unique experiences for mobile users by device type, despite the additional costs to create higher engagement.

Google wants your targeting to be insanely relevant and having a mobile option that solves a local need is what they want from you.They want users to be able to see local listings quickly at the top of the search results and they allow ads to be targeted very precisely by location. Did you know that mentioning a location in mobile advertisements and search results can increase click-through rates up to 200 percent? (Source: ThinkNear)

This is what people want and Google is going to give it to them with or without you.

After Google made its sweeping changes in terms of emphasizing Google+ Local, you just have to appear in the local listings.

Image via mobiletest.me