Submitted by Business Builders Marketing Team
The use of the Internet has become second nature to most. How often do you or someone you know say, “Google it?” Today, people use the Internet for more than just communicating; they are also shopping, attending school, and conducting business online. The Internet has essentially become an extension of our everyday lives.
Remember when traditional desktop personal computers were established? Since then, we have seen the growth and evolution of this technology, branching off into the new and innovative products we use today. To further promote convenience and instant connections, these devices provide us with unlimited resources and information right at our finger tips. We are able to consume information wherever we are, whenever we want.
This technology has become an essential part of who we are. Society relies on it to provide information on anything you could possibly imagine, including managing a healthy lifestyle. We want to be informed about possible health care risks, symptoms, and diagnoses, even before stepping foot in a doctor’s office. According to Manhattan Research (2012), the number of adults in the U.S. (ages 18+) using mobile phones for health information grew from 61 million to 75 million this year, while tablet adoption nearly doubled from 15 million to 29 million. Pew Research Center (2013) suggests now, more than ever, 31 percent of cellphone users have used their phones to look up health information.
As consumers, the experience each mobile device and technology creates for us will determine how we choose to or not to interact with it. Are websites easy to navigate? Is the visual display easy to read? Users demand that information be easy to find and easy to navigate. With the increase in mobile and tablet devices, websites must be responsive. Visitors might be reluctant to use a website if it’s too complicated to access, or if it is a challenge to navigate.
According to Mashable (2013), MarketingProfs (2013), and Marketing Land (2013), more people are accessing the web via smartphones more often than ever. Nearly one-fourth (24 percent) of total website traffic came from mobile devices in the first quarter of 2013. This is a 78 percent increase from the first quarter of 2012 (Walker Sands, 2013). Mobile web browsing is set to overtake desktop browsing in the next few years. This means that most website visitors will be browsing, shopping, and interacting from a mobile device.
Consumers can save a lot of time and frustration by researching health care providers online, while many health care providers are including patient testimonials and patient forms on their websites. Not only are providers making it easy for consumers to prepare for a visit, they are pre-qualifying their services via the content on their websites.
According to Pew Research Center (2013), 19 percent of smartphone owners have at least one health app on their phone. The most popular type of medical/health apps include exercise, fitness, and pedometer or heart rate monitoring apps. In addition, diet, food, and calorie counter apps are the second most popular app, according to a survey done by Pew Internet/CHCF (2012). More importantly, websites like WebMD, Mayo Clinic, and Wikipedia are viewed for information, symptoms, treatments, and diagnoses.
Websites are a way to communicate with clients, customers, patients, and prospects quickly. More importantly, they are a communication platform used by customers, consumers, patients, and prospects to learn about services and conduct independent research. It is critical that websites are functional, and accessible with ease and clarity via mobile phones and other popular devices. Our society today is on the move and hungry for information – don’t be left behind.
Business Builders integrates the latest technology with marketing intelligence to achieve impressive results. Contact Business Builders at 309-827-7977 or visit www.buildrevenuenow.com for web, video, and graphic design solutions.