Why Mobile Search Is Crucial For Your Brand

For any brand that offers products and services online, mobile search is at least as important as the conventional desktop search. They are different channels for expanding the mobile presence of your company. Not only should you take every advantage of your mobile users, but also treat them in a different way with your marketing efforts. Mobile users have peculiar behavior, they focus on local search, and they wouldn't want to be repelled by a badly designed website.
- 17% of searches happen on the go, according to data from Paragon Poll. What we can be sure of is that this number, dating back to 2013, is going up at a breakneck speed. 23% of on-the-go searches lead to a purchase. 43% of search results are based on relevant location of mobile customers. These numbers might as well be increasing as we speak.
- 90% of mobile device owners (smartphone owners in particular) tend to take action after a local search, which means they are ready to purchase a product or service they need. 63% of these actions occur within 1 hour after the search. 21% fall within 1-4 hours. How can one catch this attention and lead it to a purchase? Simplify the process, reduce the number of screens and input fields that the consumers have to go through. Optimize the routine for several purchases at a time, and if visitors get to like it, they will become your customers.
- Why is local information important? Well, 95% of smartphone owners browse for it, and 88% of those stated these searches as immediate needs, resulting in an action.
- More than 40% of personal computing time spent in the USA belongs to smartphones and tablets. Stimulation of impulsive customers through calls to action (click-to-call, for instance) and temporary offers is a technique that works.
- Mobile-optimized branded websites add about 20% to mobile traffic and about 25% to mobile conversions. Keep that in mind.
- You should never forget that we've become very impatient, and it takes more than 3 seconds for a website to start loading so that about 40% of us would abandon it. 64% of us expect any website to load in 4 seconds. Many searches are conducted during short breaks, so that mobile customers might not have much time, and it makes them even more hasty. Once anything is overlong to load, your website can be abandoned.
- The combination of these stats and the obvious fact that the mobile has gotten almost everywhere in business, shows that smooth work of your mobile website is crucial for your brand, and it defines the way you present your products and services. Big budgets can be easily spent on a website that will initially bring poor amounts of traffic. That's why mobile search is a huge opportunity for a properly designed website.
The obvious need for a website designed specially for near-perfect experience on mobile devices, is often neglected. When the very first iPhone was introduced, we were shown how a heavy website can be quickly loaded on a phone, and how we could read articles by pinching and zooming. Now even that's not good enough for us, mobile users. We appreciate simplicity and clear design, and we hate the details we don't need to see on a tiny smartphone screen.
What's even more important for making mobile websites an efficient part of the brand's image, is that mobile search is generally more goal-oriented. News, a place to dine, navigation, mobile shopping and entertainment - we can search for everything with our smartphones. Action is often seen as a usual result of a mobile search - this, for example, was stated by 9 out of 10 mobile users in a survey by Google.
Potential customers have to easily locally find your mobile website by keywords, which means SEO activities you have to conduct. Then your website has to catch visitors' attention and call them to action. There are design tricks to make the website simple and catchy. When working with your contractor on the design, take note of the guidelines and remember that a successful website is actually built for customers, not for the brand. Then your contractor will create it for you.
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