To be immobile is to the not progress. To be confined solely to the stationary means to watch the competition sprint ahead. To make moves conceptually does not necessarily indicate movement overall. What does this all figuratively metaphorical existential gobbledygook mean for all the businesses out there? What we’re driving at is that if your brand is not encouraging, and furthermore enabling, mobility through mobile responsiveness of your website or digital media, you are severely hurting your chances of making an impact on consumers. No matter the magnitude of the brand, today, to thrive means to jump on board the mobile train, and here is why.
General Internet Use
Let’s start at the bear bones notion of internet usage. Our simple google searches, shopping processes, meme collection, and anything else of general importance to us online stems from just our plain old internet usage. In North America alone, as of March 31, 2017, a whopping 320,068,243 people have been acknowledged as regularly utilizing the internet, accounting for 88.1 percent penetration of the population, a figure that can not go unrecognized (Internet World Stats). On it’s own, that figure holds weight, but it begs the question of what it says about mobile internet usage. Peg that figure up against those depicting mobile internet usage and you get a pretty astonishing new perspective.
By October of 2016, it was found that 51.3 percent of internet usage was conducted on mobile and tablet devices, exceeding the coverage of desktop use, standing in at only 48.7 percent (StatCounter Global Stats). And this number is projected to rise for mobile devices, but based on the figures in front of us, we can surmise that the current percentage of internet use on mobile relative to the amount of people using the internet in general equates to roughly 45.2 percent of the population being mobile internet users or 164,195,008 individuals. The fact that internet usage is now more prominent on mobile paired with the knowledge that as many as 164,195,008 people are using the internet this way gives brands 164,195,009 reasons to improve their mobile responsiveness. Need any more reason?
More Visibility
Whether you need more reason or not, we’ll go ahead and give you more. Visibility and recognition of your brand is yet another prime reason as to why your mobile responsiveness has to be on point. The first consideration goes without saying, as it was already aforementioned in the previous point. With so many people being online from mobile platforms, to be responsive on those platforms will only bring you more attention and visibility. Had to overemphasize, now we’ll let that thought marinade and move forward.
Another consideration is the circumstances under which someone will use the internet. One example of this is due to the resilience of brick-and-mortar stores. As a matter of fact, brick and mortar stores are still responsible for 94 percent of all retail sales (RealNext). This is where you may pose the question, what could brick and mortar stores have to do with mobile internet usage? And to your question we pose another question in rebuttal: As you stroll up and down the aisles of the stores you frequent, how many shoppers do you see with their desktops or even laptops on hand and at the ready? Probably none, even considering how impressive that would be to see, let’s be honest.
That being said, as people are going about their in-store shopping, they are still managing to see what is out there online. That means greater visibility for your brand, and that visibility can not be overlooked. As it stands, the major ways that you can shop these days are in store or online, and to have something that does both is ideal. To be able to see countless comparable options online to the item you are stand in front of at a store or to be able to use it in tandem with your desktop use means better visibility and, further, better versatility.
More Marketing Reach
No doubt, mobile responsiveness is good in terms of being able to just be visibly seen, but it goes beyond that. This concept extends itself into being presented in a way that people want to see you and, thus, want to see themselves doing business for you. What do we mean by this? We’ll pose an example. Say you have the means to send marketed emails to your customers, you’ll do just that as it could potentially make you some additional sales or attention. In this case, however, not all attention is good attention. Studies have shown that, with regards to emails, slow rendering on a mobile device comes with a cost of deletion by 70 percent of consumers (Impact BND). Now, not only have you missed out on a potential sale or repeat customer, you’ve missed out on the essential stepping stone to even argue the case of your brand.
This may seem insignificant to one who does not grasp the coverage of email, so to anyone that doesn’t grasp the coverage of email, let’s tighten your grasp on the coverage of email quickly and concisely. Of all emails that are opened, 51 percent of them are opened on a mobile device (Litmus). Extract that from the 2017 projection of total emails sent per day at roughly 269 billion (LifeWire) and you’re talking about a lot of emails. To miss out on over half of that, and quite possibly more as mobile email becomes more prominent, would be dire for business.
More Sales
Speaking of dire for business, what is that thing that you need in order for a business to stay afloat? Oh yeah, SALES! So we would be going back on our word from earlier if we tried to convince you that the majority of sales take place online from a mobile device, so we won’t do that. Heck, we can’t even promise that you’ll get more sales on mobile…yet. What we can tell you is that e-commerce through mobile platforms, or m-commerce, are on the up-and-up, meaning it is in your absolute best interest to start orienting toward mobile. According to the U.S. Census Bureau and ComScore, m-commerce accounted for 11.6 percent of the $303 billion U.S. e-commerce total and Business insider is projecting that in 2020 m-commerce will amount to $284 billion, 45 percent of the total U.S. e-commerce market (Business Insider). As m-commerce becomes more and more sale prevalent, we encourage its implementation so you don’t miss out on making the big bucks!
Conclusion
In conclusion, there is no shortage of reasoning to direct your online efforts towards your m-commerce betterment. For sake of visibility to online shoppers, marketing to your current buyers, making sales, and everything in between, mobile responsiveness is a make-or-break notion that your business can not afford to break. If your brand’s mobile responsiveness is not exactly where you would want it to be, there are ways to improve upon it. Contact Rave Retailer today to learn more about mobile responsiveness and achieving it for any and all brand pages. To your brand website success!