Mobile devices are where it’s at. This is something we all know. Having a mobile-formatted website is simply a must-have at this point. In spite of this seemingly compulsory information, survey says: (dramatic pause) – Fewer than ten-per cent of SMEs in Australia have mobile-friendly websites. Ouch.
A survey conducted by Yellow Pages has found the alarming trend, and the company is responding with a product that allows SMEs to create an affordable, publish-ready, turnkey website that is optimized for mobile devices.
Yellow Pages is calling the new program Site Smart Mobile and the site building tools within it are aimed squarely at facilitating users from the tiny screen. The smartphone-formatted page is spritely when downloading, and manages to spare the tapered bandwidth of mobile data providers.
Each Site Smart Mobile website can be published right out of the box (phew!), and are auto-magically SEO optimized (double phew!). Site Smart Mobile pages even offer pre-written copy and stock images making it preposterously easy to get a mobile site up and running using the application. Geo-location functionality is built into the pages, as well. Nice.
Adrian Perillo of the Sensis Group says SMEs need to be certain to have mobile-ready websites so that they don’t miss the boat on mobile search opportunities.
“Australians using mobiles to search the internet has grown five-fold over the past two years and globally, there will be more internet users on mobile devices than on traditional desktops by 2014,” said Perillo.
Good call, Adrian.
Consumers are big on small
The demand for good mobile websites is really ramping up as more and more mobile computing devices emerge in the marketplace. With devices like the new iPad Mini and pint-size Google Nexus hitting just in time for Christmas, consumers are no-doubt spending the money that they used to spend on a new laptop on envy-inspiring tablets and smartphones instead.
“Small businesses need to keep up with changing consumer preferences by ensuring they have an effective mobile presence – a design that looks great on a desktop won’t always translate well on mobile,” continued Perillo.
The new Site Smart Mobile product is aimed squarely at small to medium businesses, providing a cost-effective way to get a mobile site online with relative ease. The best part is the price: $22 per month for current Yellow Pages customers and $27.50 per month a la carte.
Mobile websites are a good thing because they allow your business’s site to go where your customers go; and sometimes they bring the customer to you.
In either case, the value of a mobile site shan’t be negated. Mobile pages encourage interaction, and interaction, as we know, is the way to get conversion.
It sounds like, in the great scheme of business investments, $22 a month is a small price to pay to give your SME a chance to bring in more ROI, which is the name of the game.
