There is no question that smartphones are now affecting local business transactions.  If you have a business of ANY sort, you need to be aware and take action now so you don’t unknowingly lose more business.  People will find you on their mobile device, no matter what industry you are in.  Let me explain what I mean.

The rise of smartphones is staggering!  Here are some supporting stats, which will give you an idea of what I am talking about:

• Nielsen reports that 40% of adult US mobile phone owners have a smartphone as of July 2011, and expect smartphones to become the majority by the end of 2011.
• comScore says the July 2011 US smartphone audience reached 82.2 million people.
• Morgan Stanley Research estimates sales of smartphones will exceed those of PCs in 2012.

Most of us are probably aware of how a smartphone can affect our daily lives, but let me give you some practical examples from my own life.  No doubt you’ll see the application in your own business.

I now use a smartphone app to manage my shopping lists.  I created lists for groceries, drug store and hardware store items that are all managed via my smartphone.  When I run out of something, it immediately gets added to a list and kept in reserve until the next time I am at the store.  No more paper lists with cross-offs.  Here’s the really cool thing (I think )...my wife, who does not use a smartphone, can instantaneously add items to my lists using her PC.  So instead of driving home on the phone AND trying to jot down those items needed for dinner…she can just add items to my list and I see them at the store when I view the app.

Just to mention a few other ways I use my smartphone: navigation and directions, product research, barcode scanning for price checks, etc.

Now let me tell you about a real life breakdown of the smartphone infrastructure in my own life that happened when I was in another state.  I can normally find products, services and business locations very easily using my smartphone.  I simply speak into the phone (or use an app) and search for a term like ‘restaurants’.  The device will use GPS technology to return results for nearby local businesses.  In this example, I was able to find a list of returned restaurant ‘Places’ (thanks to Google Places – which by the way, if you have not optimized your Google Place Page, you need to now!).  I then clicked on the pizza joint I wanted to go to, and my smartphone nearly started smoking.  It literally got hot to the touch!!  I got stuck trying to scroll and my phone was trying to download some useless script in the background.  I had to exit the application and start my search over.  This pizza restaurant did not have a mobile optimized web site and I could not view it on my smartphone.  Guess which pizza restaurant I went to that night – NOT THIS ONE!  The pizza joint lost my business because of an easily correctable breakdown in their marketing system.

Here are some things for you to consider when evaluating your mobile presence in the marketplace:

• Do you advertise with print and publish your web address (if so, people will likely navigate to you on a smartphone)?
• Are you using QR Codes in you advertising?
• Have you claimed and optimized your Google Places Page?
• Is Google Places returning your page above your competitors in searches?
• What does your web site look like on a mobile device?  Check your web site for mobile optimization now using our mobile simulator: http://910webtraffic.com/mobilesimulator  (consider zoom, scrolling, single click dial & navigation and download time).

If you have not adapted your marketing to accommodate mobile users, you need to.  This trend is not going away.  Here are a couple more stats in case you are still not convinced:

• 90% of smartphone users search for local information on their phones (Pew Research Center, 2011)
• 40% of all Google Maps traffic is from mobile phones (Google, SXSW 2011)
• 80% of US adults under 35 consider the Internet their main source of information on local information; for the total population it is 70% (TMP Local Search Study)
• 90% of searchers perform some offline follow up with businesses they find online such as calling for more information or making a purchase (comscore)

Now is a great time to start making steps to mobile compatibility before you lose any more business!

Contact us if you have any questions.  We are your mobile experts!

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