Social Proprietors and Mobile Sites
Now that the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales figures are becoming available, we are ready to tackle the issue of social proprietors and mobile sites.
Should social proprietors have a mobile site?
Based on the increasing use of mobile devices by savvy shoppers the answer would appear to be yes. But how much time and money does a social proprietor need to invest in a mobile site? Based on the information provided by IDC we can see the current market penetration and their projections for future growth.
International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, for the information technology markets. According to IDC, vendors shipped a total of 444.5 million mobile phones in 3Q12 compared to 434.1 million units in the third quarter of 2011. In the worldwide smartphone market vendors shipped 179.7 million units in 3Q12 compared to 123.7 million units in 3Q11. The 45.3% year-over-year growth was slightly above IDC’s forecast of 45.2% for the quarter.
In Canada, businesses were tasked in 2010 by Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of Canada. Recognizing that mobile phone usage in Canada, on a per subscriber basis, is higher than the average in European countries, he called for increased investment in new technologies and suggested that could help businesses weather the economic downturn.
For answers, we need to look at both the products we are offering and the target market we are aiming for.
Do the products that you offer for sale fit into an ecommerce environment? Are these items something that you would actively promote on sale to reward your customers and attract new clients?
Is your target market using smart phones or desktops to access the web? If you have a small business marketing strategy in place, you should have a good idea of your clients’ preferences and how they interact with your website. Using a traffic analysis program will provide you with the data to help you make your decision.
If you are using a WordPress website there are a number of options that can be implemented by installing plugins. There is a plugin that I recommend called WPtouch that will take your printed content and provide it in a mobile friendly format. They also offer a Premium version that provides great flexibility in rendering your website. To make use of that upgrade you will need a WordPress developer to assist you.
Another option for websites that are not fully into ecommerce and mobile sales is to build your website around a responsive theme. Responsive themes are better at resizing content to display on smart phones and tablets. Most of the future theme development for WordPress will be based on responsive frameworks. Your WordPress developer can assist you in changing your theme
