There are more mobile devices on Earth than people! And that number is expected to continue to grow at this crazy-fast pace. If you want to capture this market share (and why wouldn’t you?) then you need to make sure your website looks good on multiple devices. That’s where a responsive site comes into play.
Mobile Usage Continues to Grow – It shouldn’t come as a big surprise since mobile internet usage has skyrocketed over the last few years. In 2010, a Morgan Stanley report predicted that mobile internet usage would equal the amount of desktop users by 2014. The latest statistics proved they were almost on the money. Fifty-five percent of all website traffic is from mobile devices. Still the vast majority of business websites are not mobile-friendly. This is not just a pain for users and viewers, but also a huge loss in business opportunity.
Mobile Shopping Continues to Grow – Last holiday season 70% of shoppers used their mobile phones while in the stores and 80% of consumers regularly use their smartphones to shop online. This is not just a U.S. phenomenon, although the U.S. does the most shopping online at 59%, followed by India at 42%.
Informate measured and the percentage of smartphone owners in each country that engaged in mobile shopping in December 2014, and this is what they found:
- U.S., 59%
- India, 42%
- Thailand, 22%
- Brazil, 22%
- Qatar, 19%
- Malaysia, 18%
- South Africa, 18%
- Indonesia, 17%
- Mexico, 16%
- Argentina, 11%
- Philippines, 11%
- Turkey, 9%
The same website reported that mobile shoppers convert 160% more often on sites optimized for smartphones, making not just the volume of shoppers important but the conversion rate as well.
Social Media Increases Mobile Visitors – If you’re like most inbound marketers you have some level of blogging and social media efforts incorporated into your online business model. A recent study by ComScore reported 55% of social media consumption happens on a mobile device. If you’re sharing links to your website from your social media platforms and don’t have a mobile-friendly website, you’re going to have high bounce rates, low conversion rates, and frustrated viewers.
Responsive Sites Make Users Happy – Google’s Think Insights says if a user lands on your mobile website and is frustrated or doesn’t see what they are looking for, there’s a 61% chance they will leave immediately and go to another website. (Murphy’s law says they’ll leave your site and end up on your biggest competitor’s site) The article also says users with a positive experience on your mobile website are 67% more likely to buy a product or use a service. What makes a user frustrated? Pinching, zooming or side scrolling to view sites designed to fit on laptops and desktops. And really slow sites that take a long time to load.
One Size Fits All– One of the big benefits of responsive design is that the output (what the user sees on the screen) is based on screen size, not device. And that is good news for businesses because it no longer matters what size screen a person is using to view your website. It will display properly for that screen size, saving business owners time and money designing and maintaining multiple versions of your design (web, mobile). Even better, in the future, as new devices (TVs, watches, glasses, etc.) are being used for web browsing, your responsive site will still look perfect.
Moving forward, it‘s critical for your website to provide mobile users an easy-to-use experience with no frustrations. Having a mobile website is not just a cool feature, it’s a necessity.
The team at Grafique is a full service web design and marketing company that can help you implement your new responsive website as part of a cohesive marketing strategy.