HubShout | Online Marketing Solutions

A few weeks ago, Adam, Chad and I had a discussion about all the media coverage of mobile search. In response to that discussion, I wrote a blog post Is Mobile Search Killing Traditional SEO. One of our big conclusions as a team was that you need a mobile-friendly site, especially if you are local business: "63% of users use mobile search to look up a business. And more than 60% of people will abandon a site on their mobile if it’s difficult to read, load or navigate."

I was reading an Entrepreneur piece today that underscores that same point, so I thought I'd keep the discussion alive by passing it along:

No Mobile Website? You're Probably Turning Customers Away

And I just tweeted this for HubShout and thought I'd post here, since it's relevant. It's written by the author of the BIA/Kelsey U.S. mobile local advertising forecast:
Search Engine Watch
Mobile Ad Revenue Outlook: Local Search Leads the Way

I have seen this popping up while looking at analytics for different clients. The bounce rate for mobile users is almost 90 % in some cases. unreal.

I think I may have mentioned this in a previous post, but I will post again to prevent any digging - How To Go Mo.com is a free tool by Google for a simple conversion. Worth passing on to any local small business just looking to increase conversion rate via mobile.

Hey, if i'm searching for a local business on my iphone and they don't have a website that is easy to work with from the phone... I'll probably leave the page and research some of the competition. No mobile friendly website? you're probably losing more potential customers than you think.

I've come across a lot of these (and similar) statistics in my research, and I certainly think it bears out in my experience and that of my friends. So many people are using their phones/tablets almost exclusively for searching and surfing, and that trend is only going to rise.

I really only search on my phone to find a number or store hours. I do search a lot, but I feel like it's inconsequential to traditional SEO as all of my actually real purchases and my long hours or search are still on a traditional computer!

I'm also in agreement with Eric: if a website isn't mobile-friendly or optimized correctly, I'm elsewhere quite quickly.

product related research is still done on desktops because it's usually easier to navigate. Typical search results with local intent are focused more around store hours and location-based questions like, "5 star restaurants near me," rather than "Vizio TV Reviews."

That's why the call to action on a mobile site for a small business needs to be a call button, a built in map to help find the business, contact information, etc. The first stage of the buying cycle is awareness to fulfill a need. Consideration (the next step) is done through research possibly on a desktop computer. The Intent to buy (pre-purchase) is probably when the mobile site for local businesses pops in, since the person is researching which businesses in the area have the product they're looking for in stock. The last step is purchase at the local business (who has a sweet optimized mobile website).