I was in Chicago last weekend attending a marketing seminar, and I found myself with some spare time on Friday night. I didn’t have a whole lot of extra energy, but I thought I’d try to find some restaurants in the city that featured dancers. I did a quick web search on my Blackberry and …. nothin’ The few sites I found weren’t mobile friendly and were impossible to navigate on a phone. Sunday afternoon during a workshop on mobile marketing I found out why.
The mobile web is a completely different ecosystem than the Internet. It has its own search engines, its own rankings, its own rules. And just because you have a beautiful site, doesn’t mean it will show up at all on a mobile search.
Why should you care? Well, if I’d found a site and a dancer performing that evening, I’d have become a customer. Instead, I was just disappointed. People use their mobile devices all the time. Mobile marketing is still in its infancy in the US, but you really should pay attention to it. Soon, you’ll HAVE TO use mobile marketing to reach people. Just like you really have to have a web site today.
Consider this, according to internetworldstats.com, 23.5% of the world population use the Internet. 60% use mobile. That’s a lot of potential customers.
Also, 84% of people surveyed EXPECT sites they visit to be mobile friendly. Most people simply don’t realize that a site won’t magically miniaturize and show up properly on a 2″ screen when it’s designed to show up on a 20″ screen.
Try looking up your web site on a mobile browser right now. Is it easy to see? Can you navigate? Does it load quickly?
If not, you need to make it mobile-friendly. The simplest way is through the use of “User Agent Field” codes. This is a special bit of code that tells the web whether the visitor is on a computer or a mobile device. If the visitor is on mobile, it will strip out all the graphics, animation and unnecessary stuff and only show the content.
There’s a ton to learn about mobile marketing, and a lot of it does apply to you as a belly dance business. But for now, try looking up this site on a mobile browser to see what happens when you use one of these User Agent Field codes.
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