The advent of the iPhone and the Android smartphones and their widespread take up has dramatically changed the marketing landscape. If you don’t have a mobile friendly website yet you are likely missing out on a lot of potential customers.
Not only are more people than ever using their smart phone to search the internet for products and services, but they are much more likely to be in a buying mood rather than just conducting research.
There are now more than 3 billion handsets in the world, and only 1.25 billion PCs. Many people are accessing the internet for the first time through their smartphone.
Many of the searches made on a mobile phone are for local goods and services that need a solution right away. Consider this table from Google –
Surprising amount of searches for services done on Mobile Phones (Smartphones)
On December 10 2011, The Age newspaper ran a story titled “Embrace mobile marketing, retailers urged” .
RETAILERS are being urged to have mobile-friendly marketing strategies as new research shows the rate of conversion from making an inquiry to buying something is many times higher via mobiles.
Google’s head of retail for Australia and New Zealand, Ross McDonald, said the number of queries about retailers made via mobile devices had jumped 220 per cent year on year, and was now about 25 per cent of all queries.
And the conversion rate from inquiry to sale was much higher when people used mobile devices; for example, 50 per cent of people who inquired about a hotel via a mobile device went on to make a booking within a couple of days, compared with 20 per cent for those online via a computer.