Every small business owner in this day and age realize that they need a good website to be successful in this economy. A professional looking website can increase the number of customers, increase sales, and improve customer loyalty. It also allows the business to communicate easily with customers and provides an easy method to update new and existing customers on offers and discounts that are being provided by the company.
But unfortunately, many small business owners just assume that mobile devices and cell phones will display their regular website just fine. But nothing could be further from the truth. Many cell phones don't have nearly enough memory to display regular websites properly. In addition, images that populate quickly on a desktop computer may take several minutes to load on a mobile device. And lastly, most mobile device users will have to scroll up, down, and sideways to view your regular website. When this happens, users will almost always leave your website and find one that is more user-friendly. For those reasons, you need a website that is specifically designed for a mobile device to capture these visitors.
A mobile website is specifically designed to fit nicely on the small screen of a mobile phone. In addition, mobile sites contain fewer images and are designed to provide the most important information and keywords about your business without the need to scroll back and forth.
There are many factors to consider in the development of a mobile website. The cost is the number one consideration. Although the creation of a mobile website can be performed by any good webmaster or web design company, the cost can be very expensive. A basic design can set you back anywhere from $500 to $1,000 dollars. And unfortunately, this cost is out of reach for many small business owners.
As an alternative, many small businesses are turning to software to create their mobile sites. The software has a number of advantages. It is very affordable and usually costs less than $40 dollars. It is very easy to use and does not require you to know anything about computer programming. And, it allows you to create a professional looking mobile website in just a few minutes. You can easily find a number of good software alternatives by doing an online search for the 'best mobile website maker software.' Make sure that the software you choose does not have a monthly fee attached. This can cost you a significant amount over time.
The use of mobile phones to go online has increased rapidly in the past few years due to the increased use of smartphones, tablets, and similar devices around the world. And as we move forward, millions more people will be using their mobile phone to find everything from places to eat, where to shop, and services they use everyday. Therefore, to stay competitive and become successful, your small business needs a mobile website to thrive in the future.
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The numbers that settled the argument
Mobile overtook desktop as the majority of global web traffic in late 2016, and StatCounter figures have kept it in the 55–65% range ever since. For local businesses the skew is sharper: Google reported back in 2015 that "near me" searches were exploding (they grew roughly 500% over the following two years), and the majority of local searches happen on phones — people standing in the street deciding where to go.
The behaviour data is brutal: Google's research found 53% of mobile visitors abandon a site that takes over three seconds to load, and consumers are consistently shown in UX studies to be far less likely to return to a site that rendered poorly on their phone. A 2011 Google consumer study put that "unlikely to return" figure at over half — before mobile was even dominant.
How we got here
- 2007: the iPhone made real browsing on a phone viable; businesses responded with separate "m." mobile sites — costly parallel maintenance.
- 2010: Ethan Marcotte's responsive web design made one site adapt to every screen, ending the two-site era.
- 2015: Google's mobile-friendly ranking update ("Mobilegeddon") began demoting non-mobile-friendly pages in phone search results.
- 2018–2023: mobile-first indexing rolled out — Google now judges your site primarily by its mobile version. Since March 2021, desktop-only content effectively does not exist to the index.
For a small business this reframes the question: it is not "do I need a mobile site" but "is my site mobile first" — designed for the phone screen and scaled up, rather than the reverse. The test takes ten seconds: open your site on your own phone and try to call yourself. If the phone number is not tappable and readable without zooming, customers are already bouncing to a competitor whose site is.