The iPhone 7 launched yesterday. The biggest buzz is about the wireless headphones and the removal of the headphone jack.One more urgent reason to make your website mobile friendly. (plug your website URL to the Google Mobile Friendly Test tool to see if you are already mobile friendly).
But first more about the iPhone 7 wireless headphones story.
To iPhone loyalists the wireless headphone is alarming on two counts. First, you have to pay for the wireless headphones ($159) and second, you are likely to lose the tiny headphones. But not to worry . Entrepreneurs in the iPhone accessory industry are at work and many solutions to both these problems should be available by the holiday season. There was a necklace for the iPhone wired version (so that you don’t lose them) and already there is talk about an app to find my headphones for the iPhone7. But the wireless headphones confirm the trend to mobile in consumer behavior.
Apple was the first company to do away with the CD drive on laptops. And this technology shift to “wireless” is the shift to becoming more mobile and less “bound” to hardware. This Apple decision is similar to moves by Microsoft,Google,Facebook and Amazon to move to the cloud. And not have the customer struggle with hardware. In a sense, this is the high tech innovation model that spends much more money and effort in the early part of the innovation and new product development (NPD) process. These industries invest in the front end of the NPD process so that the later launch and marketing becomes much easier and far less expensive. Customer “love” is built into the product.
Here is a graph to understand how major pharma and tech companies invest in the NPD process. (Clarification: we do not intend to offend our readers from the consumer products industry by implying that they are low-tech. This diagram is merely to help our small and medium business readers understand why they need to get on the mobile bandwagon for their websites).
The high tech industry leaders (Amazon,Apple,Facebook,Google,Microsoft) are all pushing for a wireless mobile world.
A wireless world is far easier to manage anywhere globally. Particularly in the emerging markets of Asia, Latin America and Africa. Laying down cable is quite a nightmare in most countries. In comparison, to get a mobile phone tower up and running is much easier to execute. So one can understand the logistical reasons against wired infrastructure.
So what does this mean for small and medium business owners?
All small and medium businesses on US main street are consumer marketers and their marketing efforts resemble the blue graph on the right.These small businesses includes hair salons, plumbers, electricians, clothing boutiques etc. They must be able to reach the local customer. And this local customer is increasingly on mobile.
If you have a website – make sure it is mobile friendly. Once again just plug your website URL to the Google Mobile Friendly Test tool to see if you are already mobile friendly.
If your website is not mobile friendly, call your web developer today. The costs to go mobile are modest, and well worth the expense.
Many businesses we talk to tell us that they are going to re-do the whole website and will add the mobile friendly part later.
Here is the problem: we are yet to meet a business owner (large or small) who is totally happy and think that their website is “perfect.”Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good” as Neil Patel wrote in the Entrepreneur. If you have a website up, and even if you are not happy with it, get it on mobile. You can keep improving your website over time.
Why are we promoting mobile sites, when we don’t even do web development, our readers might wonder. Frankly, the traffic data we analyze for advertising is astonishing. We turn off mobile advertising if the website is not mobile friendly to save advertising money. The loss of potential customers we miss (for our client) is so enormous that we feel the pain. Thus we thought that an advocacy for mobile friendly websites is timely. Just as news breaks of the wireless headphones for the iPhone7. About StratoServe Digital Marketing Services.