May 28th, 2014 
A new megatrend has emerged due to growing use of mobile devices that
access the Internet.
The growing number of mobile device users in turn creates a new requirement for business owners to practise mobile marketing, which is based on mobile optimized websites. These are designed for smartphones.
This year of 2014 is special, because one of the milestones in the Internet usage is achieved. In this year more mobile devices i.e. smartphones and tablets access the Internet than PCs as the previous blog post shows.
It is known that people use their smartphones wherever they are – at home, when their go to work, at work, lunch hour, when they are walking on the streets and so on. When your business has a mobile website, anyone can access its information wherever he or she is.
Mobile Responsive Vs. Mobile Optimized
The majority of websites i.e. 82% are mobile responsive. Although mobile responsive websites are good on PCs in other words on desktop and laptop computers, they are not necessarily good on smartphones.
Why is it so? Because mobile responsive websites are built in Flash, when they do not load. Many times text is too small, when it is impossible to read without zooming. On the other hand, many websites are designed for wide screen monitors, when this kind of websites do not fit into small screen of smartphones at all and user experience can be quite diffuse.
Google gives priority to mobile websites
When someone performs a search from his/her mobile device, Google gives different results to the searcher compared to situation when someone would have done the same search from his/her desktop computer. This is because Google has different search algorithm for mobile devices than for PCs.
In addition, now it is easier to get top ranking, because there are so few mobile websites. For example the recent local investigation shows that only 3 out of 40 restaurants in Dublin have mobile optimized website. The rest have mobile responsive website or no website at all.
The majority of local searches are done on a mobile device
It is known that people do different things with their 
smartphones. This can be explained better when we
look at statistics from Google (2012):
- 95% of smartphone users have looked for local info
- 88% of these users take action within a day
- 77% have contacted a business
- 61% of local searches result in a phone call
- 59% visiting at the local business
Mobile marketing with QR codes and SMS campaigns
QR Codes (Quick Response Codes) are a special type of bar code where information is encoded into black squares. This code can be quickly read by smartphone’s QR code reader.
For example, by encoding your website link into a QR code and putting the QR code on your business card or brochure, a prospect can quickly scan it and immediately get your contact information and access your website from his/her smartphone without need to type your website address.
On the other hand, SMS (Short Message Service) means sending ordinary text messages to a recipient’s mobile phone. These text messages can contain a clickable link on to your website. This is another great marketing tool for a business owner, because it provides a form of instant communication with the prospect or customer.
So how can you turn smartphone users into customers? The answer lies in mobile marketing, which means having a mobile optimized website. This and different kind of other offers, discounts, coupons, events etc. can be advertised through QR codes and SMS messages.
Go ahead and send us an email or give us a call to schedule an appointment. You can also use our contact form or scan the QR code below.
