By Lisa Kember

Here’s the reality: whether you’ve actively embraced it or not, your business is already mobile. This is because your audience is reading your emails, viewing your website, and searching for you on their mobile devices. So the question isn’t whether or not to go mobile, it’s how to optimize for mobile in order to achieve the best business results. As consumers continue to use their mobile devices to discover new businesses and make purchasing decisions, you can no longer afford to ignore this mobile behavior.

Here are some of the top places you should be focusing on for mobile optimization, and how to go about it:

Your email

The chances are that the majority of your customers are checking and reading email from their mobile devices. If your emails are not easily readable on mobiles, your readers might disengage, or even unsubscribe from your mailing list. You need to take the mobile experience of your email into consideration—if your readers are excessively squinting, pinching, and scrolling, they might quickly and swiftly send that email to the trash bin.

If you want your audience to open and engage with your emails, you need to create messages that are short and easy to read. When using email templates, single column is your best bet for rendering in a visually appealing way on mobile Don’t use too much text because mobile users don’t want to scroll through a long page of content. Also, avoid small fonts. The optimal size is 22 point for headlines and 16 point body text. The best way to know if your email looks good is to test it. Send a test email to yourself and others in your organization before you send it to your lists. Open the email on different mobile devices and different Internet browsers on your desktop to check it thoroughly.

Your website

A mobile-friendly website is basically a shorter, more condensed version of your main site. Simply paring down your content into digestible chunks will help greatly. Make sure that your website makes it easy for people to take the next step and do business with you. Include an easy to use “click to call” button on every page and make additional contact information easily visible.

 Your ability to get found

Search is a huge part of mobile marketing. The way that consumers find businesses of all kinds has changed dramatically with the increase of mobile technology. In addition to search engines like Google and Bing, consumers use sites like Yelp, Foursquare, and other mobile apps to discover new businesses. They use sites and apps like these to help them make decisions in the moment while their purchase intent is incredibly high.

Check to make sure your business information is listed on all of the top apps and services these consumers might be using to search for you. If it isn’t there, claim your listing and get your business information posted. Most importantly, make sure your business information is accurate and up to date everywhere that it is listed—particularly the crucial details for consumers to take the next step and do business with you, like your phone number and address.

Once you accept that your audience is becoming more mobile, you’ll be on your way to adopting a strategy to meet their expectations. Put these tips to use so you can be a mobile marketer and never miss an opportunity to bring in new customers!

Lisa Kember is the Regional Director for Constant Contact in Eastern Canada. She can be reached at lkember@constantcontact.com

About the Author

Mississauga Board of Trade