The New Mobility

January 18, 2012: The New Mobility

Remember how big (and heavy) those first mobile phones were? Today not only have the phones shrunk, but we’re also increasingly reliant on mobile devices to do more than simply communicate. Whether it’s via smartphones, tablets or both, consumers are searching for information about where to eat, where to shop, what airline to fly, what hotel to stay at, what their friends are saying and, well, you get the point.

The bottom line is, if you own a business, you need to have your website optimized for mobile viewing. Check out these stats from Google Research:

  • 81 percent of smartphone users browse the Web on their mobile devices.
  • Almost 80 percent use their phones for shopping and shopping-related activities.
  • After conducting a mobile search, 68 percent of users visited a business online or in person; 53 percent made a purchase.
  • And Performics reports 81 percent use mobile search at home in the evening, 80 percent use it on the weekends and 59 percent use it before work.

If consumers can’t access or read your site on a mobile device, they will simply move on to your competitors who are mobile ready.

The number of mobile buyers will nearly triple by 2015, according to a report just released by eMarketer.

Last year, also according to eMarketer, mobile commerce sales (m-commerce) in the U.S. “surged 91.4 percent, reaching $6.7 billion.” And the forecast is even more impressive: M-commerce sales are expected to hit $31 billion in 2015.

An eMarketer analyst says, “Retailers were slow to react to consumer interest in mobile shopping. But now they are making great strides in launching mobile websites and apps.”

In 2011 most mobile shoppers (93 percent) used smartphones, but not necessarily to make a purchase. Nearly 27 million mobile users bought something from their phones last year, but eMarketer says that number “will rise quickly, to 61.8 million in 2015.”

There’s a lot more information about mobile marketing in a free ebooklet my company produced for Network Solutions. Check it out.