Globally, “dumb-phone” users still outnumber “smartphone” users by 5.6 billion to 835 million, but not so in the United States. Smartphone users are on the rise, growing each year, and predicted to soon be the majority among mobile users. Smartphones are also expected to surpass television as the dominant media of choice.

Is your Website ready for mobile?
Just when you think you have your Website looking pretty good and SEO ready, technology throws you yet another hoop to jump through. Yes, technology is changing at the speed of well, technology, and yes, it can seem overwhelming. Having great content, easy navigation, and SEO implementation are just some of the tools you can use to reach your audience, but capturing the mobile market is going to become more and more necessary as this user base increases. The opportunities lie in capturing the mobile market in the early stages of this growth instead of waiting until it becomes an absolute necessity.

Is it worth it?
It sure looks that way. It is becoming more and more apparent that the end user, your clients, and future clients will be spending more time surfing the Web from devices other than a desktop. The days of fixed widths are rapidly disappearing as consumers gravitate to Websites implementing faster download times, prioritized navigation, and the content they are seeking easier to find on their smartphones. And it doesn’t stop with mobile devices. This also includes tablets, iPads, BlackBerrys, or other Internet savvy devices. Statistics show that there is currently a huge opportunity for tapping into the mobile advertising market with this solid base of users, yet very few are taking advantage of this market so far.

So what needs to be done?
Websites need to become responsive.

What does responsive mean?
It means that the most important content and navigation of your Website needs to “float to the top” on a mobile phone or mobile device. It means prioritizing your content, and making it move or “float” into position and adapting to whatever screen size is available without making your Website appear very, very small. This means your Website will need to be able to grow and stretch, or move and shrink to fit your content into whatever screen size the consumer is using. If the viewer is on a desktop, the Website would look pretty much the same, but if the viewer is using a mobile phone, the Website would move from a three- or four-column grid to a one-column grid, maintaining the size of the content. Mobile users love this feature because they don’t have to pinch or enlarge as much, or view Websites at a very small size. It also means being able to find your content quicker and faster.

Who needs a responsive Website?
Moving forward, ALL Websites should strongly consider being developed as a responsive Website. It is the future in reaching your clientele and not likely to go away anytime soon. If you already have a Website, or if you just updated your Website for any reason, good for you! Each update is important in staying on top of security issues, SEO and Google analytics trends, as well as the importance of just keeping your Website current.

But you may want to consider making your next Website update a conversion to a responsive Website with the reward of gaining a larger audience base. It may well be your next step to your Website marketing success.