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If you walk down the street, go out to dinner, or go anywhere in public really, you’ll see an overwhelming amount of people with their faces fixed on some type of mobile device. These devices may only be a few inches of screen on a slim metal or plastic box, but the power they hold over consumers is incredible.

With swift technological advances for the newest, thinnest, and next best device coupled with an information age, the world really has become a mobile place. That’s why it is so important to make sure your online business becomes a part of this mobile world – there’s no chance mobile is just a fad, it will only keep growing. If your site is still not a member of the mobile-friendly movement, we hope to convince you. Join us while we explore some serious data that suggests going mobile.

1. Absolute Mobile Takeover 

Let’s start with the basics – how much time does the average person spend on their mobile device per day? It can’t be that much, right? Wrong. The average American spends 195 minutes absorbed in their mobile devices (smart phones, tablets, etc.).

• This means that your customers are most likely spending 3.25 hours on their mobile devices every day

Now, what are your customers doing for 3.25 hours on their mobile devices every day? A large majority of them are browsing the internet of course.

• Over 63% of American adults use their mobile phones to access the internet

How are your customers accessing the internet? Apps, of course!

• 65% of your customers spend most of their time using apps on their mobile devices
• The average American uses 28 apps regularly per month for a total of 37 hours and 6 minutes

These heavy-hitting apps are social giants like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. As we start to put the puzzle pieces of mobile usage together, we can see a relationship between time spent on mobile devices and the use of apps – specifically social media apps.

This data proves that having a mobile-friendly site is great, but having a great social media presence is equally as important. These two things together work in perfect harmony – if a visitor sees your company Facebook page while on that app, then clicks to your site and you have a poor mobile experience, they are going to bounce off your site.

What’s missing? Emails! The average consumer opens a majority of the emails that end up in their inbox on their mobile devices.

• 49.53% of emails are opened on a smartphone, compared to only 33.66% opened on a desktop computer

This means even the emails you send out need to be mobile-friendly. If a customer opens your email on their iPhone and sees a jumbled mess of text and images, they are going to move that email into the digital trash faster than you can say, “email”. Also, if they happen to click on your site link in that email and they have to pinch, zoom, or manipulate your site on their device, you just lost a customer.

2. Mobile vs Desktop Visits – Especially For Ecommerce

Now that we’ve explored the bare-bones data that goes along with mobile usage, let’s look at how that effects ecommerce. Ecommerce is one of the industries that is effected by the mobile tidal wave the most. The way consumers buy has changed – consumers don’t log on to their desktop computer and blindly buy the first product that comes their way.

Instead, consumers research these products tirelessly across multiple devices. Even though mobile conversions still have not surpassed desktop, consumers use their mobile devices to research and ultimately make the decision to purchase or not. It is so important that websites are accessible to the consumer at every stage of the buyer’s journey; from awareness to consideration to a decision and everywhere in between, you need to be there – or these consumers will go elsewhere.

Let’s take Target for example. This retail giant just released information about their holiday sales:

• 60% of Target’s holiday traffic came from a mobile device

This means 60% of consumers were browsing Target’s site on their smart phone or tablet before purchasing online or visiting one of their brick and mortar stores to convert. This data is huge and truly speaks to the importance of a great mobile experience for closing potential customers.

3. A Seamless User Experience

With the combination of cold, hard data and proof that mobile-friendliness is imperative for ecommerce websites, we come to the last piece of our mobile puzzle – a seamless mobile experience. This simply means that users should have a seamless transition between their mobile and desktop experience on your site. Your mobile site should populate correctly, fill the entire screen, and be a simpler version of your desktop site.

Enter Google. This search engine giant has recently started to include a “mobile-friendly” snippet next to search results on mobile devices. This means if a user performs a Google search on their smart phone, Google goes as far as to let them know which sites will look great on their screens. Google does not want users to have to manipulate sites in any way – making users pinch or zoom their viewpoints on your site contributes to a poor experience.

But Google doesn’t stop there – there are whispers and rumors in the digital marketing community that Google takes mobile-friendliness into consideration when ranking sites on their results pages. Though this theory is not solidly proven, it makes a lot of sense. Why indicate which sites are mobile-friendly if you don’t want people to click on those results? Also, think about bounce rate and time on site in relation to mobile-friendliness. It is widely recognized that Google tends to rank sites better when people spend a lot of time on them and don’t bounce off – this usually means their query was satisfied. If a visitor can’t properly access your site on their mobile device, they are going to bounce off and go elsewhere, possibly moving you down in the results.

Our big mobile data puzzle is finally complete. We know users spend a huge amount of time on their mobile devices every day. We know users browse the internet, use apps, and check email at a staggering rate. We also know that users tend to research companies and products on their mobile devices before making a decision to buy. Since we know all of these things, doesn’t a mobile-friendly site make perfect sense? As a site owner, you’re obviously concerned about your ability to be ranked by search engines. But don’t forget about the user – providing a great mobile experience for your customers is more important than anything else. The customer has and always will come first; giving them a beautiful mobile experience is priceless.