Up until now, making your small business website responsive was seen as an optional luxury to many small businesses. This is because most people were still browsing the Internet on their desktop or laptop computer.

Based on the latest statistics from StatCounter, in the past year mobile browser usage comprised 21.13% of all Internet browser usage and 11.94% was on a tablet.

Statistics from OurMobilePlanet also show that 90% of smartphone users accessed the Internet on their phone daily, 58% of smartphone owners used search engines on their phone daily and 52% visited the website of a business after performing local search on their smartphone.

What this means is that the shift to mobile is well underway. If you have a website that is not optimised for visitors accessing it on a mobile, they will likely exit your website quickly without attempting to navigate around. You are potentially losing customers and missing out on opportunities to engage those who go onto your site.

This is why the demand for responsive web design has also grown significantly in recent years.

Responsive web design is the approach to designing and developing a website so it is optimised for a wide range of devices, from mobile phones to tablets to desktop computers. 

Once a small business website is optimised, users can read and navigate the website with a minimal amount of resizing, panning and scrolling.

It is becoming an expectation of customers that mobile solutions such as a mobile optimised site or a mobile app will be available when needed. A study by Google also showed that customers who were able to research products and services from mobile devices participated in some sort of sales conversion 28% of the time. The same study also showed that most mobile searches were taking place at home or at work where there was the option to use a laptop or desktop computer. This was purely due to the speed and convenience of using the mobile device. 

If these statistics haven’t convinced you to go mobile yet, Google have also announced that on April 21, 2015, Google’s mobile ranking factors will not only label your site as mobile-friendly, but will also use that to decide if your site should rank higher in the search results. Google said this algorithmic change will have a significant impact in the mobile search results, impacting all languages worldwide.

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

You can use this link to check if your small business website has a mobile friendly design and give you some tips for moving to a responsive site.

It is pretty evident that the move to mobile is not a technological fad, it is the natural progression of our technology to be more adaptable to our circumstances and responsive to our needs. Whether you are selling small business accounting software or running a landscaping business, make sure visitors are having a good experience when they visit your site on their mobile.