Here in California, the grape harvest (also known as “crush”) is in full swing. As an amateur winemaker, this would normally be the time of year when my hands are stained with grapes and my weekends and nights are packed with picking, crushing, fermenting, pressing, and the never-ending job of keeping the winery clean and the volunteers happy (beer and food help with that!).
This year, however, my winemaking group (Bad Astronauts Winery) is taking a bit of a break from making new wines in order to filter and bottle all the wine we made last year. As a home winemaker, I have the luxury of being able to make this sort of decision. Professionals, of course, do not.
Every winemaker knows that, during crush, the grapes are in charge. Once you’ve made your preparations — making sure you have the equipment, supplies, people, and grape contracts lined up — there’s no way to schedule when the grapes will be the right ripeness. Despite your best efforts, you’re going to end up overwhelmed with too much work to do and not enough hours in the day. If you make the grapes wait and don’t take action when they’re the right ripeness, you’ll end up with bad wine. However, if you do everything right and at the right time, you’ll sit back at the end of the season and take a breath, admire your work, and maybe start to taste the fruits of your labor.
Imagine how much more stressful crush would be if you had never made wine before, but you were put in the position of being responsible for delivering a great product on a tight schedule.
This is the situation that many businesses find themselves in today with their mobile websites. The fact is, the time has come for mobile web sites, and mobile customers are “ripe for the pickin’!” According to Yahoo!:
- 75% of web users prefer a mobile website
- 52% are less likely to engage with a company if their mobile experience was bad.
- 48% say that if a company’s mobile website is bad, it’s an indication of the company not caring.
- By 2014, mobile Internet usage will surpass desktop Internet usage.
Clearly, it’s crush time for mobile websites. Companies that were on the early end of creating a mobile-optimized site are starting to reap the rewards. Companies that create a mobile-optimized site now will see traffic increases and keep the web customers that they have. Companies that are slow to adapt will start to see their traffic decreasing as mobile web usage continues to increase and customers go elsewhere.
But, the mobile world can be more confusing than standard desktop websites. How can you be sure that your site works on every mobile device? Should you build an app or a mobile website? Should you have a separate mobile site, or a single site that “responds” to different-sized devices? How does having a mobile-optimized site affect your search engine rankings?
Over the next few newsletters, I want to answer these, and many more, questions. If you have any other questions that you’d like to see covered, please email them to me!
If you’d like a to find out how Minnick Web Services can create a mobile-optimized website for your your business, contact us today (or just reply to this email) for a free consultation!