It has become very clear to me that cell phone web surfing is now mainstream. Even if your company isn’t in an obvious “look you up on a cell-phone” type of industry (like a restaurant, movie theater, etc), your website *still* needs to appeal to customers seeing it on a cell phone. It’s no longer optional.
My professional copywriting website here gets 20% of its visits from phones. I’ll bet yours does too. I also get 12% of my visits from tablets. So that means nearly 1/3 of my visits are from devices other than traditional desktops. And I’m in an industry where you would think a desktop is the tool people use to look for me. You know, people in offices and stuff.
Cell phones have grown way beyond kids using them to look at YouTube, and people looking for restaurants on Yelp. Businesspeople use them too, and not just for e-mail. Think about it… an executive in the airport has some downtime, so he or she decides to knock out some research on potential vendors. Maybe the same with someone riding (not driving) in a car, etc.
Now, I’m not saying these people are reading your entire site on their phone. That’s not feasible – the screen is simply too small for any kind of prolonged reading and retention. However, visitors can read enough (your headline, subheading, and opening paragraph) to at least make a decision to bookmark you for later perusal. I suspect this is happening quite often here in 2013.
This makes for an interesting copywriting situation, and, without knowing it, is something I’ve been doing for a long time. I’ve always tended to open a page with the salient points – give you the elevator speech as to that page’s content, and then settle in and further clarify things. And, in my professional opinion, this is exactly the type of copywriting that is going to really succeed over the next decade. Give me enough for a ten second decision, but also leave me more to sink my teeth into later.
To further clarify, I don’t think traditional desktops are going anywhere – they are important business tools. But clearly the tablet has replaced the laptop (thank goodness – I detest laptops), and the cell phone is carving out its own place. Right now, it’s a good bet that your average customer will view your website on more than one device, regardless of your industry.
We’re going mobile folks, whether we like it or not. Is your website ready for this?
Hi Dan,
I agree 100%. I’m presently sitting in my living room, writing this message on my nexus 7 tablet, about 10 feet away from my desktop pc in the next room… just because it more convenient and comfy over here.
It’s funny – one of my motivators in getting this new site was looking at my old one on a tablet and saying “eeew” – I had no idea it looked so bad on a smaller screen (nevermind a cell phone).