The vast majority of small and medium sized businesses have yet to form a mobile strategy or even a mobile version of their website. Search from mobile is expected to overtake desktop search volume within the next 18 months. What are the mobile search trends and how is mobile search different than desktop search?

1. SmartPhones now make up 42% of adult mobile subscribers in the US according to the PEW Internet Project study. The Project’s May 2011 survey found that 83% of US adults have a cell phone of some kind, and that 42% of them own a SmartPhone. That translates into 35% of all adults are now using SmartPhones.
2. Mobile Search: According to ComScore 36 percent of mobile Americans browsed the mobile web in December 2010. Compare this to more than 75 percent of mobile subscribers in Japan are connected media users (used their browser, accessed applications or downloaded content).
3. Mobile Only: According to On Device Research approximate 25% of American mobile Web users are mobile-only. This segment does not, or very rarely uses a desktop, laptop or tablet to access the Web.
4. Local Intent: 50% of mobile queries have local intent, and 46% of mobile queries pertain to infotainment according to Andy Chu, director of Bing for mobile. They’re using the web to figure out what to do and where to go next.
5. Peak Search: Mobile search peaks during evenings and weekends while desktop search peaks during morning hours Monday through Friday. This is according to an iCrossing study.
6. Purchase Decision: Searchers on mobile devices are closer to making an immediate purchase decision. Mobile searchers will tend to make a purchase decision within the next 24 hours. Desktop searchers are more likely to make their purchase decision within the next 30 days.
7. mCommerce: US, mCommerce revenues are expected to hit $6 billion by the end of 2011, growing to $31 billion by 2016, according to Forrester Research

How does your website look on a mobile phone or an iPad? You can quickly test how your site will look using one of these mobile emulators. These web based emulators will simulate a mobile browser environment. This gives you a quick and easy way to test your website.

Caution: These web based testing emulators only simulate a mobile browser environment. This should not replace testing on actual devices. Instead use this to give an initial look at how your site will look in various mobile environments. They are quick and easy to use. Each will give a different view of your website.

iPhone Simulator: TestiPhone.com is a web based browser emulator that will show how your website will look on an iPhone.

Opera Mini Simulator: Opera Mini is probably the most popular user-installable browser on mobile phones. It uses the Java ME platform and consequently requires that the mobile device be capable of running Java ME applications. Test your website the Opera Mini simulator.

dotMobi Mobile Phone Emulator: The dotmobi emulator allows you to test how your website will appear on the typical mobile phone. You can select a Sony K750 skin or a Nokia N70 skin for the emulation. This will allow you to see your website the way millions of your visitors will see it.

iPad Emulator: iPad Peek is a web based emulator that allows you to see how your website will be rendered on the iPad. They recommend that you view the simulation in Apple Safari or Google Chrome to give as accurate of simulation as possible.

Just like every business absolutely needs to have a website, now every business should have a mobile version of that website. According to the Global Mobile Data Forecast update, mobile data usage grew at a higher than expected rate of 159% in 2010. In 2010 mobile network connection speeds grew at 215%. By the year 2015 there will be nearly one mobile device per capita.

Mobile website viewing is growing at an accelerating rate

Mobile Sites Are Simpler

Your mobile site should be much simpler than your standard website. Eliminate many of your slow loading graphics and the site has much less text and should be very minimalistic. Look at ways to greatly simplify your design, your content and the number of pages. Focus your content on just what your mobile web visitor needs to know.

Use Valid Markup

Mobile browsers are not nearly as forgiving for bad code as desktop browsers. To insure a high level of mobile-friendliness, validate your mobile web page using the W3C Mobile OK Checker.

Target Smartphones

Design your mobile site for the SmartPhone.  This is the high growth segment in mobile. Even though Smartphones represent only 13 percent of the cell phones in use today, they represent over 78 percent of total global handset traffic. Smartphones are much more than just cell phones; they provide instant access to the web.

Display Sizes are increasing

Today 400×240 screen resolutions are common and is typical for a smartphone web design.  The new Apple iPhone 4 has a display of 960×640 and the Droid X has a 854×480. The Load speeds are a major concern as we wait for bandwidth to catchup to displays.

Mobile search results are different from desktop results 86.6% of the time according to a 2010 study comparing mobile and desktop search results of over 25,000 queries done by Bryson Meunier. Mobile search engines use different algorithms than traditional web search.

Local: There is a bias toward local results on mobile. Websites with local intent will rank higher. Google Places listings will rank higher than on desktop computers.

Bounce: Mobile search engines place a heavy reliance on bounce rate for sites viewed from mobile devices. Websites that don’t render well on mobile phones will have visitors quickly leave and will drop down in search rankings. If you want to do well in mobile search, you need a mobile version of your website.

On Page SEO: Traditional SEO practices such as title tags, heading tags and alt tags are important for mobile SEO. For your title tags and META descriptions it helps to add mobile to your tag. This alerts the web crawlers that your page is being created for mobile devices.

Content: Place your key content at the top part of the page. This makes it easier for users and bots to easily find it.

Code: Keep your designs simple and design with valid XHTML code. Don’t use Flash, Ajax or frames. Make your code simple and clean. This will help your site to load faster.

XML Sitemap: Create a separate mobile sitemap and submit to Google Webmaster tools under the mobile sitemap section.

Duplicate Content: Mobile content is not counted as duplicate; even if it is the exactly the same as your main website. You are even allowed to present your mobile content to the Googlebot-Mobile and your main website to Googlebot. See the video above.

Mobile Commerce or m-commerce is the ability to conduct ecommerce using a mobile phone, PDA, smartphone, or other mobile devices. More and more shoppers are using mobile phones to make purchases.

By 2015, it’s estimated that shoppers from around the world will spend about $119 billion on goods and services bought via their mobile phones, according to a study by ABI Research.

Retailers are looking to strengthen and improve their m-commerce websites. According to FitForCommerce, major retailers are expected to invest an average of $170,000 on their mobile sites this year.

1. HTML 5: This is the next major version of HTML and is expected to replace XHTML as the coding standard for the web. Flash was developed originally to run on desktop PCs. There have been compatibility issues Mac OSX and Apple mobile devices. HTML5 allows for better media integration and does not cause any of the problems Flash does and is the natural choice for mobile.
2. Smartphones are now how the majority of mobile Internet users are accessing the web. According to Comscore 55 percent of those who used a browser to access the web from a mobile device, did this from a smartphone. The smartphone market share is expected to continue to grow strongly.
3. Mobile Coupons: A recent Exposure2 report found that mobile coupon redemption rates often exceed 50 percent, while paper coupons typically have a redemption rate of only 0.2 percent to 2 percent. Mobile coupons allow businesses to distribute coupons directly to customer mobile phones.
4. Analytics: Retailers are expected to invest time and money into analytics for their m-commerce sites. They will be creating metrics to discover to what works and what does not.

The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) surveyed 1000 US adult consumers. They found that one in every five adult consumers is already using mobile commerce.

38% of cell phone owners access the Internet using their mobile phones (2010). This is up from 25% in 2009 according to the Pew Research Center. The smartphone has gone mainstream starting with the iPhone craze and now with the Android popularity. This has created a huge and growing market of mobile users.

People searching on their smartphones are in a hurry. Pages need to load quickly and searchers want to easily find information. Businesses now need to optimize their website for these new users.

10 Mobile Website Tips

1. Subdomain: Add your mobile site to your existing website with a specific subdomain or subdirectory such as mobile or m.
2. Detection: Display the mobile version of your website using mobile user agent detection. Always provide the visitor s link to the standard web version of your site.
3. Simple: Create a CSS file that will allow you to reduce the design of your site down to the most basic elements. Use less images and strip out extraneous content such as JavaScript.
4. Screen Size: Design mobile pages for a screen size of 320 by 240 pixels.
5. Load Time: Mobile sites should load quickly with a target time of 2 seconds. This is less than half the time of a standard website.
6. Sitemap: Include a mobile XML sitemap. A mobile sitemap uses the Sitemap protocol along with specific mobile tags.
7. Mobile DOCTYPE: Include an XHTML MP DOCTYPE in the header (example): <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//WAPFORUM//DTD XHTML Mobile 1.0//EN” “http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/xhtml-mobile10.dtd”>
8. Alt-Tags: Use alt-tags for all images, visitors regularly block downloading images to their mobile devices just to reduce bandwidth consumption.
9. Mobile SEO: Use standard SEO best practices on mobile pages. This includes primary keyword in the Title Tag, keywords in the H1s, keywords in anchor text for internal links, keyword rich body text, etc.
10. W3C Validation: To insure a high level of mobile-friendliness, validate your mobile web page using the W3C Mobile OK Checker.

There are an ever increasing number of mobile phone apps becoming available on all the major platforms. Mobile phones are transforming into a vital tool for doing business while on the move. Consumers want to engage with brands at a time of their choosing. Custom apps for Smartphones allow businesses to do just that.

The question now is… should your business have its own app to reach, interact and market to the world of mobile users?

This last week, I was introduced to an affordable solution that allows any business to create and maintain its own custom mobile app. MobilityCMS, technology by ITX, is a web-based content management system that allows any business to publish real-time updates and integrate Twitter and RSS feeds into a custom app. Mobility CMS then publishes apps on iPad, iPhone, Android and Blackberry platforms as well as creating a mobile website.

Instead of producing a static app, businesses that produce content (blogs, Twitter, audio, YouTube, etc.) can update their own app in real time and publish across all major platforms. Other content can be added for easy download by mobile users.

MobilityCMS is currently producing custom mobile apps for colleges and universities, musicians, motivational speakers and celebrities. This is ideal for marketing organizations.

The system is built out with assistance from MobilityCMS to include all your own graphics, colors, and any selection of modules that are offered with content you provide.

Having your own custom branded app is no longer a marketing tool for Fortune 500 companies. Any company can create a 24-hour-a-day presence on the mobile web and be seen as a technology leader.

You can search Google using SMS text messaging. Simply text message your search query to 466453 (“GOOGLE” on most devices) and Google will text message back your search results. Google SMS uses some standardized queries for getting your information.

SMS or Short Message Service is also caused texting. SMS search is an alternative to browser searches done on the web. You text questions to receive text answers.
Google SMS search shortcuts: For a full list of search shortcuts, go to Google SMS.

1. Definitions: To find definitions on the Web, enter ‘define’ (or ‘d’) followed by the word or phrase (ex: define ubiquitous, d network)
2. Driving Directions: To get driving directions, enter your start address then ‘to’ followed by your destination address (ex: 94040 to 94043, pasadena ca to los angeles).
3. Local business listings: type in what you want to find followed by the city and state or zip code. Example: pizza 98665 or sushi salt lake city.
4. Movies: To get movie show times, enter the name of a CURRENT movie and include a city and state, or zip code. Example: movies phoenix or movies 94110.
5. Product Prices: To get product prices, enter ‘price’ followed by the product name (ex: price dvd player, price camera), or enter ‘upc’ followed by the UPC code or ‘isbn’ followed by the ISBN code.
6. Stocks: To get stock quotes, enter a SINGLE stock ticker symbol or the word ‘stock’ followed by a less obvious ticker name (ex: GOOG, stock DUCK).
7. Time: To get local time in a city, enter ‘time’ followed by the city name (ex: time London, time Boston).
8. Translation: To get translations, enter ‘translate’ (or ‘t’) followed by the expression, ‘to’ and a destination language (ex: translate dog to french, t new to german).
9. Weather: Look up the weather anywhere by entering weather followed by city and state or zip code. Examples: weather portland or; weather 10024.
10. Web Search: Do a web search using SMS by entering the word web followed by your search phrase. The top 3 results are returned. Example: web small business consulting.

Do you need to find the location of the nearest ATM to get some cash? Then find the nearest fast food restaurant to grab a quick bite to eat? Just use your mobile phone and do a quick local search on Google.

If you are searching on your iPhone or Android phone, it is now even easier. This week (Jan 7), Google unveiled a feature called “Near me now.” Clicking on that link will return a list of local points of interest, including restaurants, coffee shops, and bars, as well as banks and ATMs. This is the latest way Google is making local search more convenient.

On other phones you need to go to Google and then select “Local” to search for businesses close to you. This makes it fast and easy to locate local businesses close to where your immediate location.

These Google local results are a combination of Google Local Business Center results that are supplemented with phone directory results from both white and yellow page business listings.

The best results occur for businesses that take the time to complete a free directory listing on Google. It is most best is to have your listing claimed, updated, reviewed. Many smaller local businesses are using this directory listing as a substitute for a business website. These free listings give even the smallest businesses to have an online presence at no cost.

By now I am sure you are saying that my company is a small local business. Why would I need a mobile website? Well, your type of company is the most searched for from hand held devices. When your customers are out and about, they are not near their desktop computer.

If they are hungry, they want to find a place to eat. If they are in a mood for a movie, they will look up the movie theater to see what is playing.

What happens in an emergency? What if their car breaks down and they need to find a nearby repair shop? What if they get into a car accident and they need to find a body shop to get towed to?

Let’s say you have someone coming to see you because of your ad in the newspaper. They get lost and go to their phone to find directions. They can’t find you, or your website won’t work on their phone …but they do find your competition. They click on your competitor and get turn by turn directions to their door. Now you have lost a customer.

So what kinds of businesses need a mobile website? Every coffee shop, restaurant, night club, doctor, dentist, lawyer, accountant, car repair and dry cleaner needs one.

…If your business depends on local customers, then you need a mobile website.

…If your business depends on advertising in the Yellow Pages, then you need a mobile website.

…If your customers want to get their information on the go, then you need a mobile website.

The mobile industry is still in its infancy, but it is growing fast. Now is the time to create a mobile friendly website and be the leader in your market.