What You’re Losing by Not Being Mobile Ready

When someone coined the phrase “You can’t take it with you,” they probably didn’t foresee the future of mobile devices. Because now, in a real sense, you can take it with you. Maybe not when you die, but at least when you’re in line at Starbucks.

Between smart phones and tablets, people all over the world are connected like never before. And if you’re not designing your website and e-mails to be compatible with these smaller devices, then you could be missing out on a golden opportunity.

The Difference Between Mobile and Non-Mobile

In recent years, home computer screens and even those found on laptops have been growing in size. Now it isn’t uncommon for someone to have a 24-inch or even 27-inch monitor sitting on his or her desk. Geez — that’s the size of the average tube TV before high definition sets took over! On these huge computer monitors, websites and e-mails look beautiful. The bigger monitors can even display two full-sized websites side-by-side perfectly. And they look great on laptops, too.

Mobile computing is different. The screens are much smaller. Although some smart phones — like the iPhone — are increasing in size, there’s a limit to how big most people want their phones. Even some tablets have released smaller versions for the sake of being more compact. These smaller screens, especially those on smart phones, present a unique problem. Their minuscule nature prevents them from displaying websites and e-mails in their entirety, or their appearances aren’t quite right. This is something you must be aware of as a business owner.

How Businesses Handle the Use of Mobile Devices

To be successful, you must be able to reach out to your customers no matter what type of device they’re using to view your website or read their e-mail. This means you have no choice but to optimize these things for use on mobile devices. When a consumer attempts to view your website or an e-mail that has not been designed for a mobile device, the result is often a garbled mess. Even in those cases where a company’s site may appear okay, certain pages may experience problems. The same goes for e-mails when trying to view them on mobile devices.

So what can you do about this? There are basically two ways to go. The first is to design your website from the ground up to be mobile-friendly. This is best when you have a resident IT professional or website guru on hand. The second choice is to use a mobile-website-design service that will either convert your current website into one that will work better with smart phones and tablets or create a parallel website with all the same info as your current site but designed to work on mobile devices.

Why This is Important

As indicated above, you want your website and e-mails to be accessible regardless of the device a person is using at any given time. Nowadays, people are multi-tasking like never before. A psychology is standing in line at Starbucks, checking his e-mails while waiting to order his latte. The soccer mom behind him is searching for new shoes through Google. The point is, every person out there is a potential target for your products or services and most of them are using their smart phones and tablets to access with the Internet. And if your website or e-mails don’t look good, these potential customers will pass you by and go with another business who has taken the time to make their marketing tools mobile-friendly.

Smart phones and tablets are here to stay. So are home computers and laptops. With so much opportunity out there to reach your target audience, you can’t afford to be left behind by not designing your website and e-mails to provide the same access to each and every person you can.