Think about how much you use your smartphone every day. Whether you’re texting friends and family, playing games, shopping, or just surfing the web, your phone touches nearly all aspects of your life.
But you aren’t the only one using your smartphone for everything these days. The number of global smartphone users surpassed 1 billion in 2012, and that number is expected to increase to 1.75 billion in 2014.
The numbers don’t lie. If you aren’t thinking about how mobile adoption is impacting your business, you can bet your competitors are. This is an area you must embrace to stay relevant to your customers because:
● Mobile advertising will drive 50 percent of Google’s paid search clicks by 2015.
● Desktop search ad spending will decrease by an estimated $1.4 billion this year.
● The average adult in the U.S. will spend 23 percent more time on a mobile device this year than last year.
● Mobile is projected to account for 26 percent of U.S. retail e-commerce sales by 2017, and 44 percent of all online shoppers start the buying process through a search engine.
Based on these stats alone, it’s clear that mobile technology will continue to impact businesses across every sector. Unfortunately, many small businesses are focused solely on getting more customers in the door today — not proactively shaping their company’s long-term online strategies. But you need to pay close attention to these emerging trends to determine how you can use them to reach your customers in new ways.
The goal of the “Everything Mobile” series is to give you, the small business owner, real-world advice and actionable steps you can take to harness the power of mobile for your business. It will walk you through various aspects of mobile technology and explore how you can use it to benefit your business.
Learn from experts in the following areas:
● Mobile websites and e-commerce solutions and strategies.
● Geofencing and its applications for small businesses.
● Beacon technology and its applications for small businesses.
● Mobile payment processing.
● Mobile advertising strategies.
Not all of these topics will apply to every small business right now, but they could be relevant to your business in the near future. The key is to gain a baseline understanding of the new mobile ecosystem so you can start applying these new technologies right away.
Want to get started? Here are some ways you can evaluate your mobile strengths today:
● Look at your website (and your competitors’ websites) on mobile devices like phones and tablets. Evaluate the experience. Is it easy to navigate? Is it intuitive and hassle-free? Or do you find yourself doing a lot of zooming and scrolling?
● Evaluate your payment process. How do you accept payments from customers? If you were to take your business off-site for a trade show or other type of vendor event, would you be able to process credit cards?
● When your customers are on the go, can they find your business? Do you have mobile ads set up to draw your customers to your brick-and-mortar location?
Stay tuned for the next article in the series, which will be delivered to your inbox in two weeks.
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