What mobile internet traffic means for your small biz

If you haven’t considered a mobile platform to help boost your small business, it’s not too late. You already know there’s a good chance your target customers are keeping their mobile devices close by, ready at any moment to log online and peruse the web, download and click. So why not make sure your website a part of that internet traffic action? Small businesses need to accommodate to the growing use of mobile users on the web, so it’s important to understand the kind of experience your small business website provides mobile users and how you can ensure your business offers users a positive online experience.

Check out these four compelling facts about online mobile traffic and what it means for small businesses:

61 percent of people have a better opinion of brands when they offer a good mobile experience.

As a mobile user, there is nothing more frustrating than finding what you are looking for online and not being able to view the content. A study by Latitude reports that 61 percent of mobile users favored brands that gave them a good mobile experience. Most website platforms come with a mobile-compatible option these days, so it is important to 1) logon to your existing small business website on a smart device to see how it looks and 2) if it is not mobile compatible, meaning the content is hard to read and in desktop format, ask your website team to adjust accordingly to enhance the mobile user experience. 

Last year’s mobile data traffic was nearly 18 times the size of the entire global Internet in 2000.

According to the Cisco System’s VNI Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, the amount of mobile traffic on the internet in 2013 was almost 18 times more than the entire global internet traffic (yea, I said global!) in the year 2000. This is a great example of how much mobile traffic has increased over the last decade, and will potentially continue to grow. In fact, in a 2014 Mobile Behavior Report by ExactTarget, 76 percent of study respondents use their smart phone to search the internet and 70 percent do so on a tablet.

Mobile phones account for 17 percent of global web usage

This infographic from Mashable shows how much smartphones contributed to online traffic in 2012 and increased in 2013 around the globe; increasing by 5.8 percent in North America alone from 2012 to 2013.

Google alerts users when a website may not work on their device

You read that right! Google is fed up with unresponsive websites, too. If your website is not built with responsive design, it might show up in the search engine giant’s results like the example below, alerting users that your website may not load on their device. This could cause a very large decrease in your click-through rate on Google results pages.

Small businesses with a responsive website not only give mobile internet users a better experience, they also build a better online relationship with them. In today’s on-the-go digital culture, small businesses need to start thinking about ways to enhance their online mobile business using strategic mobile marketing tactics to better reach their target customers and audiences. Given the aforementioned trends in mobile internet usage, it is not too late to adopt a mobile strategy for your small business.