Can Customers Find You When They Use Their Mobile Devices?

With rain sheeting down, my wife and I sat in our car in a big-box parking lot in north San Antonio. We were attempting to find directions to the new section of the San Antonio Riverwalk where the Pearl Brewery and a variety of restaurants are located.

A Mobile Search Does Not Compute

A quick Google search on my Droid found the website, but we wanted to learn the street address so that we could program our GPS. We were frustrated because the Google map did not list the street address; it only showed the location on the map. It's not helpful if you don’t know which exit to take off the freeway.

Finally, after going back to the search page while losing patience, I was able to find the street address buried further down the page in a separate review.

Later at the hotel, when I fired up my laptop, I noticed that the street address pops up on the Google map on the website, but it doesn’t pop up on the mobile version. I checked on both my iPad and my Droid. 

I was also frustrated by the lack of a telephone number to call someone or at least listen to the voicemail menu giving me directions. The only phone numbers were buried several layers down, and they were to local restaurants, most of which were closed at the time.

Is Your Website Mobile-Ready?

If you have a bricks-and-mortar location, your website should contain easy-to-find directions to your business as well as a contact number to call for further questions. Your website should be just as easy to use on a mobile device as it is on a desktop PC. Be sure to test your site's navigaton on a variety of computer and mobile devices. Don't just test with a computer.

Acxiom reports that, by the end of 2011, 50 percent of cell phones will be smartphones. If your website and your email campaigns aren’t optimized for mobile, you may be losing money. My organization recently launched a nationwide email campaign, and we noticed that 30 percent of the opens were via mobile device.

If you are not optimizing your website and your email campaigns for mobile use, you’re using a 2005 Web strategy. That’s dangerous as we segue into 2012, and it could cost you customers.

Go mobile -- before your competition gets there first.

Regards,

Glenn

Your mobile device can follow me on Twitter. I’m @txglennross.