The world is now mobile. If your business isn’t, then you run the risk of being outsmarted by your competition.
The way we search, connect and interact with brands has changed forever. Improved coverage and mobile web speeds along with the dizzying number of mobiles devices means that your website has to work much harder. It not only has to be beautiful and brilliant but it also needs to be able to work across a vast variety of screen sizes and platforms. Trinity Digital Marketing say that 1.2 billion people are now accessing the internet via a mobile device, with Mobify stating that not one screen size has more than a 20% of the market share.
With purse strings tight, making the right decisions on what’s important and what’s not, is imperative when it comes to running your business. So where to start with mobile? Is it better to have an app for your business or a mobile friendly site? There’s a good deal of hot air and strong opinion when it comes to the whole mobile debate. Cold hard stats are needed to help point businesses in the right direction. Research from comScore suggests that 82% of mobile media time is via apps. Impressive. However if you withdraw social media apps, then this number is significantly lower. Blackberry state that 99% of apps only get used once. Unless your app does something amazing that no one else’s does, then the reality is that it will get downloaded, opened and forgotten about.
So I suggest spending your precious time and money on getting a mobile site or at least a mobile friendly site. That’s what you will need and it’s what people want. Google now call themselves a mobile first company, which means those clever little Googlers that make all the magic happen, develop things to work on mobile devices first. For them, it’s the most important platform. They’ve spotted a shift in the way people are looking and accessing the internet. Cat video viewing has moved from the desktop to the sofa, from the laptop to the tablet or phone.
This increasing audience using mobile devices are not just viewing cat videos, they are spending their hard earned cash. There was almost $14 billion handled in payments by PayPal mobile in 2012, with tablet users spending 50% more online than PC users (Adobe). According to the Pew Research Center eBay has a sale coming from a mobile phone every 2 seconds.
To take advantage of this new way of spending you will need your site to work efficiently on mobile devices. 46% of consumers won’t return to a webpage if it doesn’t load properly on their mobile device (Gomez). 57% of mobile customers will abandon your site if they have to wait just 3 seconds for a page to load. We’re a demanding bunch. So make sure you don’t do half a job when you get your mobile site built. The modern day customer doesn’t take any prisoners and will be loading up your competitions website before you even open your shop door.
So now you have your mobile friendly site up and running, how do you drive traffic and your audience to it? Well the obvious thing to do is email your existing prospects and customers. The problem though is that the sheer volume of emails we receive is killing its effectiveness. We all receive an endless stream of shite which we delete or catch in spam filters where we can.
By contrast, mobile marketing by SMS remains as effective as ever. With people accessing and spending money from their mobile, it makes perfect sense to communicate with them through their phone.
If used responsibly, the rewards from mobile marketing can be huge. Response rates are 6 to 8 times higher than email. By responsibly I mean not sending them messages every single day as that’s a sure way to get your customers back up and opt out. Think about the time of day you are sending your messages. No one wants to be woken up by your message. I have found that two peak times are around lunchtime between 12 – 2pm and also late afternoon/early evening can be affective, with many people commuting and looking for something to look at.
Making your business mobile could be the best business decision you make, and by not doing it you could be treading on thin ice with your competition beneath you.
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