This week I have the honour of being the guest speaker at the AusIndustry Annual Office Professionals & Managers Breakfast for Devonport Chamber of Commerce and Industries. While trying to decide what to fill the 15 minutes with, an idea started to gel. For the last 4 years we have been sharing our knowledge with local businesses to help them improve their presence online – wow, have things changed in that 4 years.
Having a website used to be the main game, then Social Media became the place to be online to grow your business, now with the rise of web connected mobile devices you need to have a mobile version of your website so you can make the most of all those people looking for you on their phones and tablets.
In 2012 a business hoping to do well online should cover all three of these modalities. You need a website of your own – it gives your business some legitimacy and you ‘own the platform’, you aren’t at the whim of ‘facebook like changes or worse’. Social Media is where all your customers/clients live so it’s important for your business to have a presence there too – you can develop relationships with your customer base and grow your business via recommendation.
The new kid on the block when it comes to doing business online is mobile! The number of mobile devices (smart phones and tablets) is astounding as is the amount of web surfing/browsing. Google recently revealed that 61% of of people that ring you have research your business first on their MOBILE phone. We all know how hard it is to find things on web pages on the mobile – you are forever expanding and reducing the screen to be able to navigate. What many businesses are missing is this: if a client is looking for you on a smart phone they probably want to ring you, send an email to you, find your address or see a basic run down of your services/products. As a business owner you can make if super easy – have a mobile version of your website created! That way when a potential new client comes across you on their smart phone they will be instantly re-directed to the mobile version of your website, which – and this is the secret – only offers them the actions they would likely want on a phone!
Our web development business in Launceston – SMiK Web Design – is now offering these kind of ‘action based’ mobile websites, so if you have a website that is hard for your clients to navigate on a smart phone do them a favour and go check out SMiK Mobi..
So this is what I will be sharing with the breakfast – I hope they get a lot from it.