Webmarketing in 2012 ...the smart phone effect

Last week I was invited to speak to a group of around 100 accountants at a conference in London. The conference was aimed at looking into the future of the profession over the next 10 years.  

One of my main points was that the next generation of business owner is likely to be more mobile, using personal answering services and virtual offices to not only keep overheads down but to also be more flexible in where and when they work.

I suggested that they would store data in the cloud and access this using their smart phone which would become an important tool in their day to day business life.

My comments were based on the fact that more people are choosing smart phones to access data through apps that they download. However, with the increase in usage of QR codes and other offline tactics, that make the link between the offline world and the web, accessing websites on smart phones I feel will become more important as we progress into 2012.

I own a smart phone and I know that it can be really frustrating when I load a web page if it is not designed or optimised to run on a smart phone. Maybe as we enter into 2012 we should consider more carefully the way our websites look and feel on smart phones as well as through a more traditional browser. Maybe we should concentrate on substance over style!