If you want Google to get your business any love at all, companies and entrepreneurs need a strong mobile strategy to survive. Here are a few reasons why.
What is Mobile Strategy?
Being mobile friendly means responsive design on smart devices, in the most simplistic way. Take eBay for example. On a computer at a desk, shopping on their website is pretty straightforward right? But what if you tried to use that site on your smartphone? You’d likely be so frustrated by the tiny writing, inputting your payment information would be a nightmare, not to mention the fact that the image sizes of the items you’re shopping for would be sized for a computer screen, not a phone screen. It’s possible you’d be so displeased by the site that you’d abandon the sale altogether. eBay has removed this completely by developing a mobile application that makes shopping a breeze, because it’s built specifically for smartphones.
Having a responsive website is a similar idea, but slightly different. It’s a web application that is designed in such a way to look good and work consistently well across all devices. It’s not the easiest thing for developers but if you’ve got the right skills and talents (ahem) then it can be a pleasure.
One Google to Rule them all
Right now, Google wears the crown for all search engine and search engine results. It currently is estimated to account for nearly 70% of all searches worldwide. It would probably be higher than that if it weren’t for Baidu, the Chinese equivalent to Google, which accounts for pretty much all search engines in China, but that’s only for now. With Google’s diversification of assets, it certainly has other strategies to maintain its massive revenue by innovating in different fields.
But now we digress. We want to talk about why businesses should have a mobile strategy, and be mobile-friendly. We’re mentioning Google because it has a very special algorithm that determines which businesses get listed in the first pages of any search. And, if your business’ website isn’t cutting the mustard, your customers won’t be able to find you, because you’ll be buried deep in the lower pages of the search results.
38% of all enterprise web sites — sites for businesses with 1,000 or more employees — don’t meet Google’s criteria. That number doesn’t even include sites for small businesses that rely on location-based searches, which shoppers discover via queries like “pizza delivery in downtown San Francisco.”
Sounds pretty bad right? So how can you make sure you’re showing up on search results, and on your customers’ radars? Read on.
Some Mobile Strategy Stats:
- More Google users use a Mac (24%) as their primary computer vs. Yahoo/Bing users (17%)
- Google users had the highest smartphone penetration (80%) vs. 58% for Yahoo and 65% for Bing
- 83% of Google users search on Google every day
- 78% of Bing users search on Bing every day
- 80% of Yahoo users search on Yahoo every day
That means that if you’re not mobile friendly, you could be missing out on the 80% of search inquiries that are made on smartphones per day.
Like Google says, “Be Mobile-Friendly or get buried in Search.”