News about Your Brand in a Mobile World

"Getting mobile right these days is more important than ever," said Chris Rippey, Google's Head of Industry, Investments Advertising at a Makovsky seminar.  "If companies do not get it right, there is a price to pay."

And according to a series of surveys, Rippey is not only right on target, but large numbers of companies are asleep at the wheel, passing up an enormous economic opportunity.

Mobile units are growing by leaps and bounds.  Rippey advises that mobile devices account for greater than 13% of web traffic and, in a year, mobile queries will rise significantly.   Globally, mobile devices will outnumber PCs next year, with PC sales experiencing their worst drop in history at -13.9% from '12 Q1 YY to'13.

Over 50 % of Americans now own a smartphone.  Within two years of their introduction, 40 million tablets have been sold, and the iPad has been Apple's fastest selling device.  TechCrunch reports that 50% of Facebook interactions are now from mobile.  Overall, tablets are growing much faster than the growth rate of smartphones.

Despite all of this, more than two-thirds of companies (70%) have yet to optimize their websites for mobile use, according to Econsultancy’s Conversion Rate Optimization Report, produced in association with RedEye, based on a survey of more than 700 client-side and agency digital marketers.

Because of the many companies "mobile-ly" behind the eight ball, Rippey cites these statistics regarding those using mobile units:

·         55% say a poor mobile experience hurts their opinion of a brand

·         79% will turn to a competitor's site after a bad mobile experience

·         52% said that a bad mobile experience made them less likely to engage with a company

So what to do about it? More companies need to pay attention and start optimizing their websites for mobile, and — when they do — make sure that the visitors' mobile experience is equal to that of their regular website.  Companies also should be monitoring the levels of traffic that arrive at sites from mobile devices, so they can determine a level-of-activity standard (e.g., 20%), at which conversion must take place.

An interesting example is eBay, where mobile now accounts for 10% of all UK sales and, globally, a product is sold via mobile every second on average, amounting to $5 billion in global mobile sales in 2011.  Rippey points out that 22% of financial consumer purchases were made through mobile in '12 and 38% of such purchases are forecast by 2015.

Mobile units are changing the world. They present a major opportunity … if companies take the time to study the landscape and properly optimize their sites, so they achieve the clarity and speed that every consumer wants.