Most online activities start with a smartphone. Think about it, you see an ad or review for the latest gadget and you pull out your current gadget to get a quick price. You may bookmark it or send it to Evernote to check it out later, but you’ve started the online activity. A new study released by Google shows that smartphones are now the most common starting place for online activities. This is not just about search but includes shopping at 65%, travel at 47% and social networking at a whopping 66%. This number includes mobile browsers as well as native and web apps. The eye-opener of the bunch was online finance at 59%!
So, if users are coming to your website via search, social media, browsing or shopping, there’s a very distinct possibility that they are using a mobile device. Modern companies need to automatically redirect mobile users to an optimized mobile site or take the next step and create a fully responsive website that automatically detects and adapts to the visitor’s device.
Which option you choose depends on your business. Businesses with a lot of content may choose to offer a mobile site that only pulls specific information from their main website. This is often done to optimize important elements like load times and navigation. If you’re a restaurant or small business and your site is fairly lean to begin with, a responsive option may be best for you.
Once you’ve gotten this off your checklist, you can experiment with many of the new ways to drive visitors to your mobile site and not worry which device they are using. These include QR codes, links in SMS or email campaigns in app promotion and advertising.
If you’re not sure which to choose, we’d be glad to help you weigh the options.