Organizations that aren't thinking about mobile may be at a disadvantage, according to a recent Managed Hosting News article. Trevor Bradford, managing director at BrandVoice Marketing Group, said having a version of a brand's website optimized for mobile is a minimum requirement for remaining competitive. However, organizations can benefit by implementing ecommerce hosting solutions that support mobile and by offering consumers shopping and other store applications.
"It is a trend that does not seem likely to wane," the article stated. "According to [a] report from ABI Research, one in four e-commerce buys will be completed on a mobile device by 2017. However, businesses that fail to provide well optimized mobile websites risk higher bounce rates, whereby consumers visit the site but leave without completing any transaction."
Although it is already beneficial to have a mobile-optimized web presence, it may be even more crucial in the near future. An Internet Retailer article reported that Google is currently testing a feature that will direct mobile visitors to websites optimized for tablets, smartphones and other devices. Many companies do not currently have mobile-optimized websites, even if they pay for mobile ads. This disadvantage may get larger as search engines adapt to the growing mobility trend and make it more convenient for users to identify pages they will be able to access quickly.
Website optimization for mobile
Internet Retailer also provided several tips for optimizing web content for mobile, including: Reducing the number of server requests, minimizing the amount of code and using Cascading Style Sheets instead of images. The overall goal of website optimization should be to minimize the amount of resources that must be processed by the user's device. Adding a great deal of rich content may work well for sites targeting traditional platforms, but could greatly reduce performance for mobile consumers.
"Retailers at the forefront of mobile commerce have already been using tactics to show consumers in mobile paid search results that they will be directed to mobile-optimized sites and not have the slow-loading, frustrating experience of trying to manage an e-commerce site on their smartphones," the article stated.
Organizations that decide to take mobile a step further by designing their own applications can benefit from selecting mobile hosting providers with protection services such as distributed denial of service attack prevention. A recent report from Imperva said web applications have become a popular target of attacks. The average online application comes under attack 120 times per year or 33 percent of the time.
