Top 5 Reasons Your Company Should Go Mobile
Jonathan Ward | President and CEO | Twitter | LinkedIn
The use of mobile devices continues to increase year over year. This is a trend that isn’t really that surprising to any of us. It’s reckoned that in a year there will be more mobile connected devices than people on Earth. Companies that haven’t already embraced this trend or don’t embrace it soon are putting themselves at a huge disadvantage.
The following are my Top 5 Reasons Your Company Should Go Mobile. For the purpose of this discussion, mobile includes: smartphones and tablets.
1. By 2015, mobile app development projects targeting Smartphone and Tablets will outnumber PC projects by 4:1. (Gartner Predicts, 2012)
This prediction is a clear indicator that the world is going mobile. Companies need to realise sooner rather than later that optimising their business for this revolution is essential for future business.
2. Consumers want to pay using their Mobile Devices.
Accepting mobile payments is a trend with great momentum and is becoming an expectation from mobile users. Mobile payments are predicted to go up 44% in 2013. Research Firm Gartner says over $235 million in payments will be made with mobile devices this year. In retail outlets, those pay-by-phone options break down into three main categories: Brand Specific Apps (Starbucks app), Payment Apps (PayPal or Square Wallet) and NFC – Near Field Communications (special phones linked to a Google Wallet or Isis Account)
3. Mobile app users are four times more engaged than those surfing the web through a browser. (comScore Mobile Metrix, March 2012)
The ‘third screen’ is proving to be a highly successful marketing tool for companies. Recently, Facebook announced that the click-through rate of their mobile ads are 13 times higher than the equivalent desktop ads. Mobile ads also earn Facebook 11 times as much revenue than their desktop counterparts. There is also talk of hyper-local mobile ad targeting coming the Facebook advertising platform in the near future – another huge advantage for mobile advertising.
4. BYOD – Bringing Your Own (Mobile) Device to work is becoming a much more common trend
BYOD helps businesses get faster response and higher engagement from employees.
Companies need to pay attention to the security issues around this and implement proper security and processes to ensure confidential information and data isn’t compromised. 46% of Enterprises provide some level of Support to Personally Owned Mobile Devices. Cisco Systems, 2012
5. Nearly 3/4 of Mobile Users say they’re more likely to revisit a Mobile-Friendly Site.
Users are five times more likely to abandon the task they are trying to complete if the site isn’t optimized for mobile use, with 79 percent saying they will go back to search for another site that meets their needs. 55% of respondents agreed, “A frustrating experience on a website hurts my opinion of the brand overall”.
So what exactly are consumers looking for in a website accessed from a mobile device? According to Hamdouchi.com this includes: – Site speed -load time of 5 seconds or less – Big, mobile-friendly buttons – Limited scrolling and pinching – Quick access to business contact information – “Click to call” button to phone the business – Links to the company’s social media profiles – Clean and efficient design
I welcome your thoughts or information you can share about trends you are seeing regarding mobile. Thanks for reading, for more IT staffing insight make sure to connect with our social media channels.
