1. Your Visitors Are Mobile
Currently, between 5% and 10% of your website or blog visitors are accessing your site via a mobile device. Mobile web traffic has increased immensely within the last year and will continue to rapidly expand. Every day, more and more smartphones are being purchased, sold, and repurchased by consumers. How easy is it to navigate your website on a mobile device?
2. Keeping Up With The Competition
Big brands have already invested thousands of dollars in order to create a mobile-friendly experience for their web visitors who are on-the-go. Find an iPhone, Blackberry, or Android and visit Nike.com, Walmart.com, or Target.com on your desktop and then on your mobile device. You will notice that the mobile version loads fast and is much easier to navigate on a mobile phone. This type of ease leads to people staying on the mobile site longer, and the longer that people stay on a website, the more likely they are to buy or click on an advertisement. At the end of the day, there is something to be learned from where large brands are spending their money.
3. Speed and Convenience
A website designed for mobile will load in about 4 seconds, while a desktop or laptop site can take up to ten times longer to load on a mobile device. Do you want to keep your visitors waiting that long? Today’s consumers are more impatient than ever and making them wait will cost you money. Speed is only one aspect to consider. What about convenience? Think about why someone is visiting a website on a mobile phone. Are they more likely to read your “About Us” section on a mobile device or are they looking for something more immediate (e.g. phone number, directions, hours of operation, etc.)? Mobile web users have different needs than someone sitting at a desk casually browsing your site or blog. Catering to these needs will result in happy visitors and happy visitors will result in money.
4. The World Is Changing
Morgan Stanley’s analysts believe that mobile web traffic will out-weight desktop and laptop internet traffic by the year 2015. Others believe that this will happen much sooner. Regardless, this information is tough to ignore and must be acted upon sooner rather than later. If your bank is not allowing you to deposit anymore money because you have too much, ignore this inevitable web transformation, you will be fine. However, if you want to keep up with the web, it’s time to adapt.
5. The Price Is Right
Creating a mobile website can be overwhelming and sometimes quite pricey. However, with the advancements in technology, you can use a service like Moably to create a mobile version of your website or blog without having to write a single line of code and without paying a dime for development. At this point in time, there is no excuse a website owner can give for not catering to their mobile visitors.
