Google Sites Mobile Landing Pages, more snappily known as Google Mobilize, is a new initiative by the company to encourage more SMEs to develop mobile websites.
“Lots of people are buying on a smartphone, but what we’re not seeing is lots of people have mobile-enabled websites making it easy for people to buy on their phone.It’s the biggest barrier today for m-commerce, and they are losing out to people who do have mobile-optimised websites. Only 17% of the businesses that we work with today have a mobile-optimised website.”
said Ian Carrington, Google’s mobile advertising sales director for northern and central Europe. Carrington also outlined some other trends:
- 36% of the UK population now own a smartphone.
- 53% of people who own a smartphone in the UK are using it while watching TV, an activity known as ‘dual-screening’.
- 24% of UK smartphone owners use their phones for comparing product price while in shops.
Google Mobilize offers a free service for businesses to build their own mobile website and tap into the growing mobile consumer market. Many companies take the mobile app route (either iOS, Android, or both) to reach these consumers but the mobile web offers an alternative approach (already used by some) to reach people without the investment in app creation, or the need to deal with mobile app store providers.
Here’s a rather nice video from Google.