What’s best for your business?

It was the statistic that got the Twitterati excited as AdAge reported that more people owned mobile phones than toothbrushes (4.8 billion v 4.2 billion). Mashable also predicted that “by 2016 there could be 10 billion smartphones.” This obviously offers some interesting marketing strategies – not least for the makers and sellers of toothbrushes who are obviously missing a trick or too!

For many in the business community, it is figures like these that perhaps make them realise how far behind changing customer behaviour they have fallen behind. Most businesses have websites that are barely adequate for the 21^st century, and the concept of social media, mobile optimised websites and mobile apps are ‘for other companies’ – presumably those more successful companies who are happy to meet the challenges of internet marketing to grow their businesses. A new website design might be the first step to meeting these challenges. If you don’t run a CMS-based website then the first thing to do is make sure you correct this as quickly as possible. The new website design will allow you address the many areas of internet marketing and SEO that are becoming standard for even the smallest of businesses – blogging, social media marketing, updating content, adding video and images, etc.

What could a mobile-friendly website design achieve?

A WordPress or Magento website will also allow you to develop an almost future proof website. That’s good for the future of your business and will help you ensure your marketing remains cost-effective: you won’t always be calling in 3^rd party website design agencies. And that mobile optimised website can be achieved by a free plug-in. It will allow you not just to create a website that can be viewed with pleasure on a mobile or smartphone, but actually allows you to restructure the site to maximise the opportunities that mobile searches bring to the company – for example, a stockist locator search tool might be given prominence for those searching ‘on the go’. The idea of a mobile app for small and medium business is no longer the stuff of fantasy. The cost of their development has fallen significantly. As with all marketing a company needs to put itself into its customer’s place: would the ability to connect via an app make their lives easier? Could they book an appointment directly, or check the progress of a project using an app? Can you supply a quote or specification with such an app? If the app has the ability to add sales or increase your level of customer service, then there may be a sound business case for its development. A social media agency could perhaps advise further. Remember to watch this space as we will be releasing a range of online marketing blogs over the coming months. Our readers can also find our Opace Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/OpaceWebDesign. For all the latest goings on, you can keep up-to-date with Opace on Twitter https://twitter.com/OpaceWeb. And we also now have an Opace YouTube page live at http://www.youtube.com/user/opacewebdesign.

Image credit – Bwana McCall