It’s a bit late in the month for New Year’s resolutions but with the proper work year starting next week after the Australia Day long weekend, it’s not too late to do a quick health check of your company’s mobile presence.
Two years ago we passed the point where smartphone sales overtook those of personal computers and increasingly customers are expecting not only to find a business on their phone but also be able to read the company’s website on a mobile.
So the New Year’s resolutions are simple: look at your company’s website on some smartphones and check the listings in Facebook and Google My Business are correct.
The Facebook and Google listings are simple and if it turns out they are out of date or wrong can be quickly and easily fixed. These are probably two of the most cost-effective marketing things you can do for your business.
Should the website look dreadful on a smartphone then things are bit trickier and you may have to contact your web designer to enable a responsive function on your site. Responsive design detects the device a visitor is using and adapts to suit. Some older sites and platforms don’t support this and if that’s the case you need to start planning and budgeting for a redesign immediately.
If the site is based on modern platforms like WordPress or Drupal there are plugins that will do most of the work automatically while services such as Blogger and Wix have responsive features built in, although you may have to tweak the site’s template to give prominence to important information on a smaller screen.
That important information includes contact details, address, opening hours and a concise description of your business, the quicker customers can find these, the more likely you’ll win them. If you’re in hospitality then linking your location to Google Maps will help guests find you.
While these three tasks are simple things, and by no means a full digital strategy, they are probably the quickest, easiest and cheapest things you can do to get in front of customers in an increasingly demanding and crowded market that expects to find you on their smartphones.
Paul Wallbank is the publisher of Networked Globe, his personal blog Decoding The New Economy charts how our society is changing in the connected century.
Paul Wallbank writes on how IT affects communities, markets and workplaces. He also helps businesses to grow and engage their customers with technology.
