In 2008, an analyst at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers made a bold prediction. “Mobile to overtake fixed Internet access by 2014. According to the latest report from comScore, we’re way past the mobile tipping point. It’s not whether mobile marketing is important, it’s how will we use these statistics to improve our marketing on mobile devices.

2015 will be a year to remember when it comes to mobile. It’s the year when mobile searches outnumbered desktop searches. If you haven’t carved out your mobile strategy for 2015 you’re already behind.  2015 marks the year when having a mobile friendly site is no longer just a “nice-to-have” feature. The importance of having a mobile-friendly site runs across all industries and markets. Why?  Google has already started using “mobile-friendliness” as a ranking signal in April 2015.

Still not convinced? Here are some interesting facts and statistics to prove just how critical it is to have a responsive design for your website:

  • 33% of consumers would like mobile websites to have the same content, features and functionality as a standard website.
  • 1525% increase in mobile data usage forecasted between 2010 and 2015. (Source: Mediative)
  • There are over 6.8 billion people who use mobile phones – that’s roughly 87% of the world’s population (Source Wikipedia)
  • 80% of Internet users own a smartphone (Source: Global Web Index)
  • 56% of Americans have a smartphone and 34% of adults have a tablet device (Source: Pew Research 2013)
  • 72% of consumers want mobile-friendly sites (Source: Google Research)
  • 27% of websites are misconfigured for smartphone searches, which leads to an expected drop in traffic of 68% (Source: Bright Edge Mobile Share Report)
  • 62% of organic searches display different results on desktop vs. smartphone (Source: Bright Edge Mobile Share Report)

According to reports from eMarketer, worldwide mobile traffic is about 30% of all internet activity and there’s no reason to expect that number to go down. In fact, it will go up with new products like smart watches, smart accessories and smart televisions.  As a result of these constantly increasing numbers for mobile users and Google’s firm stance on mobile-friendly sites, you should be taking measures to make sure your site is current with a responsive site, which means that the same HTML is being sent to all devices using CSS to render the page according to the device being used.

What do all these statistics mean? It means that even if you don’t sell merchandise, products or services online, not having a mobile friendly website will begin to hurt your search engine rankings. Many companies have spent a huge amount of time, money, and effort trying to get their business to rank on the coveted first page of Google. If you don’t have a mobile friendly site, your rankings will start to drop. As more and more people turn to their mobile devices to search and do business, the effectiveness of your website will start to dwindle until it becomes completely outdated.