My Local Electrician recently conducted a poll amongst its readers asking how they prefer to keep up to date with the latest electrical industry news.
53% of respondents indicated they used a laptop, MAC or PC to access the latest news. This leaves 47% of respondents who access news on an alternative device such as a tablet, Smart phone or other mobile device. This is practically half the market, so what can be done to ensure your business does not lose potential customers to competitors?
The easiest way to bring visitors to your site is to have a website that is easy to use in the first place. Essentially this means your website needs to be responsive, so when a visitor comes to your website they will be able to view your website easily regardless of what type of device they are using – whether it is a mobile phone or PC wide screen, your website will be easily navigated thanks to the responsive theme on your website – where the website fits to the size of the screen being used. How many times have you visited a site on a mobile device only to find yourself scrolling around trying to find your bearings?
If your website is not currently responsive then you are missing out on an important growing market. Accessing websites via a multitude of hand held devices is a growing trend and it is important that you are not losing potential customers simply by having a website that can only be viewed on a PC for example. This is particularly true of tradesmen as our current poll suggests:
How do you mostly keep up to date with the latest electrical industry news?
Laptop/PC/MAC – 47%
Tablet PC – 7%
Smart phone – 19%
Iphone – 13%
Other – 7%
The results of the poll indicate that on line is definitely the way to be and is not going to go away, however it is very fast moving. Long gone are the same drawn out processes, it is vitally important that your website keeps moving with the times, get known for having a outdated website and your visitors will start diminishing quickly. This could affect you in all sorts of ways including the ranking of your website in search engines. Having a responsive website is one of the many ways search engines decide where to place your website in search engine results, and having a responsive website is being viewed as increasingly important by search engines.
Your website is also your shop window, in the same way as you would want to present your shop window nicely to people passing by, you would hopefully want a similar presentation on line. With the potential reach on line far greater than the High Street, it really does pay dividends to ensure your potential customers have a great on line experience. Just think if your competitor has a responsive website and you do not, there won't be many guesses as to where your customer base might be heading to.....