Going mobile means more now than ever

Chances are you've used your smart phone to search for a local business in the last few months.  Search engines like Google are great for finding the phone number and addresses of local restaurants and stores, but online business listings offer so much more than the ancient phone book. Online business listings can offer reviews, directions, specials, services and more.

With so much information literally at our fingertips we can be much more selective about the information we want to find. And if you are a consumer searching for a specific product or service, such as coffee shops that are open at 6 a.m., if you coffee shop does not have an online presence those searchers might not even know you exist and will take their business to a shop that has hours, prices, specials etc. online.

Think about what you expect when doing an online search. Your keywords bring up a list of web sites, and if your click on the first one does not yield useful information then you're on to the next.

So having an  informative and well-designed website is a great way to get new customers, but in this increasingly mobile era it is not enough.  It is estimated that 60% of searches are done on a mobile device. Is your website mobile friendly? Sure it looks great on your office desktop, but remember that mobile device screens are much smaller and things like videos and large image files can slow down how fast your page loads, especially on a mobile device.

Most people won't sit around and wait for a page to load on their device. If it does not load they'll simply go to a different web site or get frustrated and
 not come back.

Need another reason to make your website mobile friendly? Google searches done on a mobile device will no longer yield results with non mobile-friendly websites.  That's a relief for consumers, but if your business has not hopped on the mobile bandwagon it could be suffering.

So what does having a mobile-friendly website mean?

The design should be responsive. Responsive websites can detect when a user is visiting from a mobile device and automatically fits the content to the correct size.

Read more about how mobile can benefit your business in the article How to Seize Untapped Mobile Opportunity in 2016