10 Ways to Improve Your Business with Mobile Technology


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A recent study shows how reliant small businesses have become on mobile technology. The 2013 AT&T Small Business Technology Poll says 85 percent of small businesses now use some kind of smartphone. And 80 percent of small firms founded less than two years ago use tablets, the survey also showed.

Customers are becoming more mobile too. The International Data Corporation, a global marketing intelligence firm, says the number of smartphones shipped now outpaces the number of “regular” cell phones worldwide. Tablets are on the increase with customers too.

Improve Your Business With Mobile Technology

Add Mobile Payment Options for Customer Convenience ~ USA Today

Uyen Nguyen owner of Lemongrass Truck, a growing food truck business, reckons her budding company would be nowhere at all without mobile technology. Her company uses tablets to take credit card payments at points of sales and uses social media to let mobile customers know where their truck will be located from day to day. Mobile technology makes sense to Nguyen because her whole business is mobile.

Arm Your Sales Team With Mobile Tools ~Tweak Your Biz

Zoe Maldonado, blogger at TechBreach, writes about the tools of the modern sales force. These include smartphones, PDAs, laptops and tablets. Smartphones and tablets provide mobile sales teams with constant communications and productivity tools including email, internet scheduling and calendars. Mobile business applications allow teams to do presentations, engage in social collaboration and even prepare invoices.

Use QR Codes to Engage Customers in the Mobile Space ~ Right Hand Planning

Online marketing and SEO consultant Peter Semple gives two case studies showing how small businesses can do this. In one instance, a savvy auto mechanic sent out a direct mail piece with a QR code allowing customers to download his mobile app. In another, a local promotional clothing company offers customers a protective sleeve for wireless credit cards. On the sleeve is printed a QR code to the company’s mobile store.

Add Cloud-Based Software-as-a-Service for Mobile ~ TechCrunch

Companies like T-Mobile have begun offering cloud-based services for mobile customers, including telephony features like voicemail, CallerID, conference bridges and more. Increasingly, these services will now be available for the small business market, too. This latest package is aimed at companies with 20 or fewer employees.

Increase Agility and Reduce Costs ~ Firmology

Boil it all down and the real benefit of mobile technology is agility and efficiency. Sam Frymer, founder of personal consulting firm the Awesomeness Institute, points to the time you save sharing information instantly via email, social media, or other electronic documents from no matter where you are. Add to this eliminating paper from your world completely and you can begin to see the increased efficiency and decreased costs.

Use Mobile Apps for Management Tasks ~ Digital Journal

A study by email marketing company Constant Contact finds small businesses are using mobile apps for a host of management activities. The study found small businesses most often used apps for activities like scheduling and time management, customer communications, GPS and mapping and accounting and invoicing.

Do Banking in the Mobile World ~ American Banking

There’s at least one other small business task you can complete using mobile apps, though it’s a task that didn’t show up on the list of popular activities in the Constant Contact study. Small businesses can use mobile apps to do their banking too. Check out the latest feature on Jot, a mobile app Chase provides its business customers.

Use Mobile Video Messaging Apps ~ OurHelix Blog

Mobile video apps aren’t limited to Vine, the 6-second looping video app Twitter acquired while still in development and launched a few months ago. There are also apps like Tout and Viddy. Amy Nedoss, strategic direction and business development leader for OurHelix, takes us through some of the basic differences between these apps and then gives us an overview of what businesses can do with each.

Create a Mobile Friendly Website ~ Entrepreneur

Your website should be easy for mobile users to view. One way to accomplish this is to simplify your web design so it is easier to view on a smaller screen like the one on a smartphone. Another is to create a special mobile version of your site designed specifically with mobile visitors in mind.

Look Into Responsive Design ~ Small Business Trends

When looking into creating a mobile friendly website, one term that keeps coming up is “responsive design.” Simply put, this means creating a website that is not designed for a specific format. Instead, this kind of website resizes itself based upon the screen of the device upon which it is being viewed. In practice, this may be the most versatile solution for the issue of making your site friendly to mobile users.

Have we missed something? Tell us how you’re using mobile technology to improve your business today.

18 Comments ▼

Shawn Hessinger Shawn Hessinger is the Executive Editor for Small Business Trends and a professional journalist with more than 20 years experience in traditional and digital media for trade publications and news sites. He is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists and has served as a beat reporter, columnist, editorial writer, bureau chief and managing editor for the Berks Mont Newspapers.

18 Reactions
  1. Hi Shawn and thanks for the great list of mobile resources. Of course, we often see posts on basic mobile marketing and making your website more mobile device friendly which are discussed here as well. But it’s also helpful to see the various management options including, banking, scheduling, invoicing etc. that are available through increasingly plentiful mobile apps. Thanks also for sharing this post with the BizSugar community.

  2. >>a local promotional clothing company offers customers a protective sleeve for wireless credit cards. On the sleeve is printed a QR code to the company’s mobile store.

    This is a great idea. Thanks.

  3. great list to improve your business via mobile technology i would like to discuss on Mobile SEO and Mobile PPC. mobile seo will help you to improve your business via mobile technology. mobile ppc also will be beneficial.

  4. The mobile payment option is always convenient as this will help your customers pay for your goods or services even if they are on the go.

  5. Sridhar Obilisetty

    Hi, Shawn Hessinger and big thanks for sharing great list to improve business via mobile technology. This times, Mobile payment is one of the best option for customer convenience. Keep continue!

  6. It is really important to start looking into mobile technology. People are now using surfing the Internet mostly through mobile.

  7. This is an excellent article. You have covered many points in the article that I never think about and are beneficial for the business. Thanks for sharing such useful information with us.

  8. Agreed with all the points mentioned. Mobile technology is the next big thing because it now caters 70% of the audience online as per Hostnoc’s statistics. The great write up I have also subscribed to your blog as well.

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  10. Great article! thanks for sharing. lots of helpful information for a smaller business like I run

  11. Hi,

    This is great info especially for a small business like myself