To a large degree, business is like fishing. If you don’t go where the fishes are, you end up empty-handed by the end of the day. It’s simple logic. Applying it in real life is a different story altogether. It’s no wonder why fishing with a hook line and sinker is practically an exercise in patience. For many of us who don’t have the patience to wait for fish, we use fish finders. These are the electronic sonar devices that are fairly common in most fishing boats these days.
But that story is actually a lesson in business. By now, you may have transformed your business to take on an online function. As the coronavirus rolled into town taking with it the many freedoms we now long for, giving your business an online address is wise. However, you may have to tweak things a bit, assuming you want to make the most of the experience. People, like fishes, are gathering in a different location. In the past, they logged into the online world via desktops. Many are now on the world wide web via their smartphones.
The Rise of Mobile
There is no doubt that people are going online these days. That is one reality that is a direct consequence of the coronavirus coming to America. And it may never be the same again.
Robert Kargon, a John Hopkins University science professor said, “What I’ve found as a historian is that emergencies, for example like World War I, World War II, the Great Depression, they tended to accelerate rather than necessarily innovate new kinds of relationships, new kinds of ways of life.”
So the daily routine of many Americans today consists of a healthy dose of online apps and websites. Among these are reading news from Twitter, binge-watching Netflix, and buying goods via Amazon.
But what many businesses fail to understand is that the online experience is undergoing drastic changes. And top of these is getting into mobile, away from the iconic desktop.
Official Google data show 58% of searches globally are done via mobile devices. That tells you the desktop is slowly taking a beating.
It’s steady growth that can’t be ignored. In 2016, there were but 40% of searches worldwide done on mobile. That figure has increased to 55% by 2017. Given this trend, Google predicts ad revenues in America for mobile would reach $21.55 billion by 2022. In effect, this eclipses ad revenues from desktop searches.
The rise of mobile is also evident in the number of hours spent online. Worldwide data in 2015 show, users have been spending 59% of their online time via mobile devices while only 41% of users used a PC to be online.
How You Can Maximize Mobile
What this means is to be relevant you should factor mobile into your business. Just like our fish analogy. To capture its market, a business must adjust to the changes in that market.
You can do this by ensuring your website is mobile-friendly. As reported, Google has already rolled out search engine updates in 2015 geared towards mobile. Indeed, the most powerful search engine in the world has included “mobile-friendliness” as a ranking factor in its searches.
But having a website is no assurance that your website is mobile-ready. One test to know is the 3-second method where you drag your website in a browser to the extreme left.
Another test is to use Google’s mobile-friendly test. Click the link to check it out.
Then there is the case for Search Engine Optimization or SEO. When Google updates its search algorithms, you also need to adjust your SEO to meet said changes. Getting a competent team to factor these changes should be top of your list.
Certainly, there is a chasm of difference between searches done via the traditional method online and those via mobile. For one, when you log into a PC to search, you use the search bar to do it. In mobile, that may not be the case.
When you have Voice Search, Gesture Search, and Google Goggles your search terms are not the written word. It’s an entirely different ball game. Then there is the case for QR Codes. Truly, the search mechanism in mobile is an entirely different universe from that on the desktop. This is as shown in Google Research.
The Bottom Line
The mobile experience is changing the way the market is behaving online. Being able to adjust to these changes can be key to creating the next fortunes of the decade. Like fishing, the biggest catch belongs to the best-prepared boat.
