The Local Mobile Commerce Conundrum

For nearly a year, we’ve been demonstrating via the SMB DigitalScape data that nearly all SMB sites we’ve analyzed are not optimized for the mobile experience. A new blog post from Greg Sterling points to new consumer data that Google posted here on Tuesday. According to wave 2 of SMB DigitalScape which analyzed some 2.1M SMB websites indicates that fully 98% of those will NOT offer the end user a compelling experience. The bottom line according to Google “Without a mobile-friendly site you’ll [the SMB] be driving users to your competition.” There are a number of data points that Google offers up and the one that struck us as the most interesting is that “

50% of people said that even if they like a business, they will use them less often if the website isn’t mobile-friendly”. What’s so important about this finding is that many SMBs often get complacent and this suggests that they cannot do so without some potentially serious consequences. It’s good to see Google generating a consumer perspective of what is going on in the marketplace. Marrying this data with SMB DigitalScape’s data centric view of the state of the SMB web presence and performance and BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor data one can begin to see a comprehensive picture of the local media and commerce landscape.