Does My Company Need a Mobile Website?
Are you considering building a mobile website for your company, but not sure if it’s worth the investment? For all companies, regardless of industry, making sure your website is accessible and functional on mobile and tablet devices should be a top priority.
The Mobile Website Imperative
Mobile device adoption has been an unstoppable force over the past few years, and it shows no signs of slowing down. Forrester Research recently forecast global smartphone subscriptions to reach 3.4 billion in the next five years, crossing the 50 percent mark for smartphone penetration by population in 2017. With more smartphones, tablets and “phablets” saturating the market than ever before, it’s no surprise that mobile is a growing driver of web traffic.
Walker Sands takes a deeper dive into mobile’s momentum in its Quarterly Mobile Traffic Report, examining web analytics across a range of B2B and B2C clients in order to determine emerging Web trends. Walker Sands’ Q1 2014 Report confirmed that mobile devices currently accounts for one-third of all Web traffic, up 31 percent since Q1 2013 and 133 percent since the same time period in 2012.
Our findings demonstrate that both smartphone and tablet devices are used widely by customers to research for products and services, even for B2B companies. Prospective B2B customers are end users too, and many are conducting research about your company and competitors from their own mobile and devices. If they can’t use your site because it’s not optimized for mobile, you could lose their business.
Measuring how much mobile traffic your company’s website receives is as simple as checking Google Analytics. Google Analytics allows users to filter web traffic to see what percentage of visitors is coming from mobile devices, and (if you have conversion tracking enabled) what fraction of website conversions stems from mobile traffic.
Benefits of a Responsive Designed Mobile Website
By optimizing your website for mobile using responsive design, you can improve the mobile experience. At Walker Sands, every website project we do incorporates responsive design. This means the user experience, content, site structure and images will render the same regardless of device.
There are several benefits of a responsive designed mobile website, including:
- More Efficient: Since responsive design is device-agnostic, you don’t need to spend time or money building a separate website design for each device.
- Increased Conversions: Users won’t convert if your website does not render properly on their devices. Building a responsive mobile website increases your ability to generate mobile leads, and eliminates the risk of losing customers before they have a chance to convert.
- Improved SEO: Google values a mobile-optimized site for searches conducted on mobile devices. And all of the SEO value and content from your website will automatically apply to your mobile site.
- Easier to Manage: If you have separate sites, your marketing and IT teams are forced to manage each in silos. With one responsive mobile website, everything can be maintained and updated from a single, centralized location.
At Walker Sands, our seasoned web development team has the insight and experience to help you build a responsive designed mobile website that looks great and functions seamlessly no matter where your audiences are viewing it. Fill out the form or call us today at (312) 267-0066 to learn more about how we can help.