Have a Mobile Website? If Not, Here's Why You Should

Jan. 20, 2012

This is a guest post from Sagar Jani, Digital Strategist at Station X Communications. If you find this post useful, be sure to register for Marqui's free live webinar, The Marketer's Guide to Taking Your Website Mobile, on Tuesday January 31 @ 10:30-11:30AM PST. Click here to check out the details and reserve your spot.

If you can take away one key message from this blog post, let it be this:

It's not that mobile web "will" be hugely important. It already is.

This is the point I try to drive home to those marketers who think they have time to wait and "see how it goes" before trying to build a proper mobile web presence. The time for delay has long passed.

ComScore, for one, has indicated in 2011 that of the roughly 5 billion mobile phones in the world, 25% are already smartphones. In North America, that number is already approaching 50%.

This one's my favourite: North Americans currently spend almost 3 hours per day on their mobile device, according to Microsoft Tag. That's approximately 1/3 of the time we spend sleeping each day!

There is a huge disconnect, however, between these numbers and the majority of average companies' web marketing activities. A whopping 70% of companies have not optimized their website for the growing number of mobile consumers. Research has also shown that 84% fail to design emails for viewing on a mobile device.

These numbers are usually surprising for many of the marketers I work with. If you realize the potential of mobile, but haven't quite articulated a proper strategy yet, you still can. Studies have shown that 80% of users would visit websites more frequently on their mobile devices if those websites were quick-to-load and reliable.

If you're eager to get your mobile web strategy off the ground, join me in Marqui's live webinar, The Marketer's Guide to Taking Your Website Mobile, which is taking place on Tuesday, January 31 @ 10:30-11:30AM PST. Click here for more info, and to register. We hope to see you all there!