According to statistics from Pew Research, nearly 60 percent of American adults now own smartphones and around 40 percent use tablets. Both these indicators are set for continued growth.
But the most startling insight is that over one in four websites are not mobile friendly.
They are not configured for smartphone usage, and this in turn leads to a massive loss of potential traffic. These websites are ranked lower because search engines do not recognize these mobile sites as related to their desktop counterparts.
This latest report from SEO and content marketing firm BrightEdge reveals that these websites can potentially boost their smartphone traffic by as much as 200 percent.
As Jim Yu, CEO and founder of BrightEdge explains:
“With smartphone website traffic growing at 10 times the rate of desktop, mobile websites are quickly becoming the cornerstone to content marketing and customer engagement.
We know that mobile will play an integral role in the future of marketing and want to help brands navigate the challenges that mobile presents. This report will help businesses understand the best ways to create mobile-optimized sites in terms of traffic and search rank, boosting customer engagement and, more importantly, ROI.”
The report also shows the differences between desktop and mobile, revealing that 62% of searches show different results, dependent on whether they were conducted on desktop or mobile devices.
Interestingly, most modern smartphones have no issues browsing full sites these days, and while creating responsive sites is one approach to a fruitful implementation, it has to be implemented correctly, so as not to be classified as cloaking by Google and other search engines.
You can read up on the full details and download the report from the website.