If Your Site Isn’t Mobile-Friendly, You’re Missing Out on Business

Earlier this month Nielsen reported that 40% of all U.S. adults are using smartphones. This Nielsen finding follows a report from The Pew Internet & American life project that showed for all smartphone-using adults, 25% said their preferred method of Internet browsing was their phone.

In addition research conducted by the University Of Maryland School Of Business this year notes that only 56% of small businesses have a website at all. That is up substantially from the 45% of the year before (an 11 percent increase) but not as big a jump as the prior year in which only 33% of small businesses had a website ( a larger 12 percent increase).

In another related study from January of 2011 the firm Burson-Marsteller found that only 38% of the Fortune 50 companies have mobile websites.

It stands to reason that because all of the Fortune 50 companies have websites and only 38% of them have mobile sites, that a much smaller fraction of the 56% of small businesses who have websites will also have a mobile site.

So to recap here are the relevant statistics from these studies.

• 28% of all smartphone users are on I-phone
• 40% of all adults use a smartphone
• 25% of smartphone-using adults use them to surf the Internet over PCs.
• Market penetration of smartphones may exceed 50% of all mobile phones by the end of this year.

So what does this all mean? (I did the math…)

1)    That currently 10% of all visitors to websites are generally viewing them on their smartphones.

2)    Of that 10%, an estimated 3% of all website visitors cannot view flash content At All (because they are surfing on an iPhone)

3)    That at the very least 62% of all businesses (if the numbers hold across the board) may be missing out on potential customers because they don’t have a mobile website.

4)    A far bigger percentage of small businesses (somewhere far above 62%) are missing out on potential customers because they lack a mobile website.

5)    Sometime, either late this year or early next Smartphones will become the dominant cell phone type and the number of users viewing content mostly on their smart devices will skyrocket.

So what should my plan of action be?

1)    First, get a mobile website. It is crucial for all companies that have a website to have a properly designed accompanying mobile site.

2)    Second, make sure if you have a mobile website, make sure it is user friendly – no flash (I-phone users cannot see it).

3)    If you are going to speak to an audience you should speak their language. This means that companies should be careful about placing important content within Flash on any or their sites, mobile or not.

David Maples is an attorney licensed to practice in the state of Louisiana but this site is intended purely as a resource guide for educational and informational purposes and is not intended to provide specific legal advice. Drift Web Design Incorporated is not a law firm but does employ attorneys who work for us as general counsel. Any information provided on this site should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a professional attorney in your state. The use and receipt of the information offered on this site are not intended to create, nor does it create an attorney-client relationship.

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