If you are a small or local business mobile searches are your best friends. How many times have you or your someone you were with picked up their smart phone and googled “restaurants in the area” or “gas station near me”. Local business and mobile searches go practically hand in hand, people using mobile searches are usually on the go and looking for something close by. In fact, according to a recent study by google 50 percent of consumers who performed a local search on a smartphone visited a store within a day.
Why is this so important for small businesses? Googles recent mobile friendly update made it so that sites that are not mobile friendly will rank lower on google than mobile optimized site. In other words mobile users won’t be able to find your small business as easily if you do not have a mobile friendly site. 4 out of 5 consumes are using mobile phones to search and shop and an astounding 93.3% of small business do not have a mobile friendly site. This being said it is extremely important for small business to know how to capitalize on their mobile traffic.
First thing to keep in mind is that simply making your site mobile friendly may not be enough. You may have a responsive site that looks great on a desktop screen but when viewed on a mobile screen results in information missing or being impossible to find. You should check using on multiple devices (not just an iphone) to make sure your site is fully functional. You don’t want your users scrolling and scrolling to find the information they are looking for. In fact over half mobile users leave a site after just 3 seconds of not finding information they want. It is also important to keep in mind what people are looking for on a mobile site. Things like an address, telephone number or location finder are all important to mobile users.You should have these visible and easy to access, more times than not people using mobile sites are on the move and are trying to get to your business, so help them get there easier. And finally track your mobile traffic correctly. Many mobile traffic goes undetected because businesses do not track it correctly. Google Analytics tools allows you to break down traffic to where you can see specifically how your site is being viewed from different devices, from desktop to tablet to mobile devices. Pay attention to conversions on mobile sites or points where users drop off to help identify if your mobile site is effective.
Mobile traffic is not going anywhere soon, so if you are a small or local business you should be thinking about mobile users before you let another opportunity pass your business by.