What do you feel when you hear news articles about the increasing use of smartphones to surf the Web?  Do you worry about how this might affect your business model, or do you get excited about the potential rise in traffic to your Web site?  The fact is, the news for online business owners is all good.

Over half of the smartphone Internet traffic out there is via an iPhone, and over half of that is people searching Google.  One reaction would be to stress out over how everything is changing and let yourself get carried away, stressing out over what tomorrow’s online environment may look like.  You could easily talk yourself into losing sleep over whether your online business is ready.

Another reaction would be to reflect on how the more things change, the more they stay the same.  On the one hand, yes, and a growing amount of Internet traffic is going through smartphones instead of through desktops or laptops.  On the other hand, a lot of that traffic is still going through Google, just as it has been for quite a while.

So, you will need to make some changes.  You’ll need to make sure you have smartphone friendly autoresponder messages.  And you’ll want to make sure you consider smartphone traffic when you’re thinking about how to make a website.

If you’ve got a brick-and-mortar store in addition to your online business, all this Google traffic through smartphones is even better for you.  Make sure you’re listed in local directories and Google maps.  Google has special local search algorithms for smartphone users, giving you the opportunity to direct local traffic to your shop through their smartphones.

But, in the end, these are just appearances.  Appearances matter, of course, and you have to make sure you address these issues.  But they’re issues that are easily dealt with, and your friendly reliable cheap web hosting company can help you out with advice and templates.

But the deeper issues, like the infrastructure of your business and the way you draw traffic to your site, remain largely unaffected.  The time and effort you put into getting high paying keywords, your involvement in social networking and affiliate marketing—stuff like that—will continue to serve you well whether your customers are using a desktop, laptop, or smartphone.

This should come as some relief if you’ve been worrying about how the growth of smartphone use could affect your business.  Frankly, the news is all good!  Beyond making a few cosmetic changes to your virtual storefront, mobile devices mean business as usual for the online seller.  In fact, you may see an increase in sales as more and more potential customers can now find you online from wherever they’ve carried their smartphones.

After all, the more time people spend on line, from a smartphone or wherever, the more opportunities you have to grow your business.  And when you add the fact that smartphone users are also big Facebook and Twitter fans, the routes by which your marketing can reach them seem endless.

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