10 Reasons Why Small Businesses Should Have Mobile Friendly Websites Following “Mobilegeddon”

On April 21 , 2015, Google updated its algorithm, which had web developers and designers everywhere frantic about their mobile uncertainty. This was one of the more drastic updates to Google’s renowned algorithm, and it was evident that the new update had a big impact on mobile friendly sites. The update certainly drew the attention of the media as developers everywhere began to refer to the change as mobilegeddon, mobilepocalyse, mopocalypse or mobocalypse.

The dust has settled and some businesses have adapted to Google’s updated algorithm, but there are still some businesses who lack mobile friendly websites. Did your business survive mobilegeddon? Businesses that still haven’t adapted to the change need not fear—it’s not too late to improve mobile standing in Google’s search results. Here are 10 reasons businesses need mobile friendly websites:

• 72% of consumers want mobile-friendly sites (Google Research)
  
  - Google researched the importance of mobile sites and found that 72% of consumers
  demand a mobile friendly site for ease of navigation.
  
  -  Consumers actually lose interest in the sites that were not compatible with their mobile devices. (Sunrise Advertising)  Businesses should be listening to consumers: where there is demand, there is opportunity to succeed. It’s clear that the demand is for mobile sites!
  
  - Alan Hall from Forbes writes how “Listening to Customers Yields Success.” It’s a great read that illustrates the importance for small businesses to learn to actively listen to what consumers are saying.  As Hall says, “ all great and successful company leaders have a clear understanding of their customers” and in this case it’s clear that businesses must understand customers want mobile sites.

• 67% of consumers are willing to buy a product or use a service on a mobile-friendly site (Google Research)
  
  - Small businesses are likely to have an advantage at making sales online if their site is mobile friendly.
  
  - As indicated by the stat, consumers are more active than ever online shopping. Businesses must make sure their site is attractive to a buyer to enhance conversion opportunities.  

• Five to seven seconds is all you have to convince a user that they are on the right page with relevant results to their search (Baymard Institute)
  
  - Consumers lose interest very fast, and most people are impatient. If a website isn’t mobile friendly, it can takes seconds for a consumer to lose interest and stop navigating a cluttered, incompatible mobile website.I know I hate trying to navigate buttons meant for a mouse with my fingers. It's clunky and makes for a poor user experience.

• US adults spend an average of two hours and fifty-one minutes a day using mobile devices (eMarketer)
  
  -People are already on their phones, so small businesses should be there too! Mobile devices and smartphones are now an essential part of people’s everyday lives.

• There is a 21% decrease in non mobile-friendly URLs on the first three pages of search results (BrightEdge)
  
  - What’s the saying? If you aren’t on the first (3) page(s) of Google you don’t exist. Consumers don’t spend a whole lot of time navigating through secondary results on Google. Businesses need to make it easy for consumers to find them. People might like a hunt in their romantic lives, but definitely not on their online search.
  
  - Most people find what they are looking for in the first few results. If a small business isn’t on the first few pages of Google, they might not ever be found. Optimizing a website to be mobile friendly allows for a better SEO ranking and a higher chance of consumers finding a business.
  
  Did you know? The first organic search position is the sweetest, getting 1/3 of all clicks. Second position gets half as many clicks. Traffic drops off significantly when looking at results on further pages(WSIOnlineWorld).

• Mobile friendly sites have gotten 32% more organic mobile traffic than non-mobile friendly websites since mobilegeddon. (CoolMaterial)
  
  - It’s very obvious: people want to view mobile friendly websites. Businesses will generate more traffic to their website if it’s mobile friendly, and traffic is what every business wants, right?
  
  - "Organic traffic" is traffic to your website as a result of unpaid search results. People visiting a site for this reason are often far more valuable than any other type of visitor because they are proactively searching for a product or service. This means their purchase intent is far higher.  

• 94% of smartphone owners look for local information on their phone (Televox)
  
  - Because searchers are looking for this information on the go, their purchase intent is far higher than people searching on a desktop.
  
  

• 89% of participants admitted to searching for a local business on their smartphone once a week or more, with 58% searching at least daily.  (Mediative Spotlight on Local Mobile Consumer Search Behaviour)
  
  - Again, these users have high purchase intent and are of great value to local businesses. Consider yourself: when are you most likely to make a search on your mobile? Likely when you’re already out and looking for a restaurant, dentist, store or whatever you may be in “need” of at that moment.

• Consumers are spending 15+ hours/week researching on their smartphones  (Google) 
  
  - Consumers are constantly looking for small business, and those businesses must make sure they are at the top of the list! People are constantly on their phones, which is why it is essential for businesses to be there too. Be where customers are rather than expecting them to come to you.

• There are over 6.8 billion people who use mobile phones–that’s roughly 87% of the world’s population (Wikipedia) 
  
  - So if it’s not obvious by now, nearly everyone has a phone, and numbers pique in North America. We see through the previous statistics that more and more people are using their phones to get in contact with businesses.
  
  - Did You Know? The United Arab Emirates has over two mobile phones in use per person! Check out the link above to see how many mobile phones are in use throughout different countries in the world.

Still unsure of how mobilegeddon works? Essentially, when a user “Googles” something on their mobile device, the sites with mobile friendly displays will be prioritized in the search engine results. Now, this is a big deal in the business world, as many small businesses don’t have mobile friendly settings for their websites. Mobilegeddon was bound to destroy the online presence of any small businesses that lacked mobile compatibility. Many small businesses were struck with panic as their websites were not prioritized in Google’s search engine results, which meant no attention or exposure to their business.

Yes, these statistics are alarming, and probably very worrying for businesses without mobile compatibility. However, you must “KEEP CALM AND OPTIMISE YOUR SITE FOR MOBILE”, because creating location pages and mobile friendly landing pages for consumers is really not that difficult. Vendasta offers a “freemium” product known as Presence Builder that can set up a mobile friendly location page with ease that you can offer clients for free. There are no more excuses keeping you from going mobile, and we’ve got the tools to help.