My favorite two facts:

• 91 percent of adults keep their smartphones within arm’s reach. (Source: Morgan Stanley) Guilty as charged.
• Even more important to entrepreneurs: 9 out of 10 mobile searches lead to action. More than half lead to sales. (Source: SearchEngineLand) Stunning.

Do I have your attention? Read on:

1. There are 6.8 billion people on the planet at present. 4 billion own mobile phones. (But only 3.5 million use a toothbrush. Oy!) Source: 60SecondMarketer.com.
2. As noted 91 percent of adults have their smartphones within arm’s reach. And that was as of 2007. I would wager the sum is closer to 100 percent now. (Source: Morgan Stanley)
3. Twenty five percent of Americans useonly mobile devices to access the Internet. (My 19-year-old son is one of them.) (Source: GoMoNews.com)
4. There are 5x as many cellphones in the world as PCs. (Source: ImpigoMobile)
5. 82 percent of U.S. adults own a cellphone. (Source: Pew Reports 2010)
6. There are 271 million mobile subscribers in the U.S. alone.
7. 51 percent of U.K. mobile subscribers have a smartphone. 49 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers own a smartphone. On this front, at least, the British have the Americans beat. (Source: MobiThinking.com)
8. Brands using SMS successfully reach 95 percent of smartphone and non-smartphone users. (Source: GoMoNews.com)
9. 90 percent of text messages get read within 3 minutes of delivery. (Source: ImpigeMobileStrategy.com, 2011)
10. As earlier noted, 9 out of 10 mobile searches lead to action. More than 50 percent lead to sales. (Source: SearchEngineLand)
11. Here’s a golden gem: Mobile perform 4-5x better than online ads for key metrics such as brand favorability, awareness and purchase intent. (Source: Neilson Study, 2012)
12. 37 percent of people who check in with a service like FourSquare do so from Android. 34 percent check in from the iPhone.
13. 70 percent of mobile searches lead to action within one hour. (It takes a full month for the same percentage of desktop users to catch up.) (Source: MobileMarketer.com)
14. 40 percent of mobile users have admitted looking up information about a t.v. program at the same time they were watching the show. (Source: ImpigeMobileStrategy.com, 2011)
15. 74 percent of people use their mobile phone to help them while shopping, with 79 percent making a purchase as a result. (Source: ImpigeMobileStrategy.com, 2011)
16. Neilson reported an 89 percent increase in mobile data usage from 2010 to 2011. Cisco is doing them one better: the company predicts an 18x increase from 2011 to 2016 as reported by FierceWireless.com.
17. Mobile coupons receive 10x higher redemption rates than print coupons. (Source: GoMobileBook.com)
18. The Weather Channel gets 600-700 percent higher click through rates on mobile display ads over desktop banners. (Source: MobileMarketer.com)
19. Total reach of Apple’s iOS (including iPhone, iTouch and iPad) exceeds the reach of Android by 59 percent. (Source: Comscore, April 2011)
20. 16.7 million mobile subscribers (including 76 percent of all smartphone users) use local check in. (Source: Comscore)
21. 81 percent of smartphone users have done product research from a smartphone, and 50 percent have made a purchase via their phone. (Source: Prosper Mobile Insights)
22. 33 percent of U.S. mobile users prefer offers via text to mobile Web (21 percent), Apps 11 percent and voice mail (8 percent). (Source: DMA.org, 2011). Because this data surprised me (I personally hate text offers) I also looked up the most current results.
23. According to a February 2013 report by Mobile Marketer, however, a full 42.3 percent of consumers prefer SMS deals versus bar-code scans or push message coupons. Surprised?
24. 50 percent of survey respondents report responding to a text offer. Of that same group, 32 percent have scanned a coupon via a QR code. (Source: Marketingcharts.com)
25. 30 million consumers watch television content via their mobile phone. (Again, including my 19 year old son.) (Source: Nielson)
26. Data from JumpTap STAT reports men are more inclined than women to click on ads. (Who knew?)

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27. Apple iOS produces nearly double the click through rate (72 percent) of Android (41 percent). (Source: JumpTap.com)
28. 73 percent of smartphone users say they used the mobile web to make a purchase instead of using an app. (Source: JumpTap.com)
29. In 2011, 43 percent of marketers used mobile technology and 25 perent planned to do so with only 15 percent having no plans to “go mobile” according to Unica.com. More recently in May 2013 a Constant Contact survey reported that a whopping 73 percent of marketers now use mobile. What a difference two years has made.
30. In December 2011, tablet and smartphone users spent 94 minutes with a mobile device, on average, but averaged only 72 minutes on the Web through other methods. (Source: Blog.flurry.com)
31. At that same time, 50 percent of smartphone users had scanned a QR code and 18 percent had purchased afterwards. Is that still true? According to a Mad Mobile News report on October 30, 2013, QR codes lost popularity after their inception but are currently thriving again, with 40 percent of smartphone users currently reporting they’d scanned a code and purchased afterwards, boding well for holiday shopping strategies at the close of 2013.
32. Time spent on mobile devices is largely dominated by online games (49 percent) and social marketing (30 percent), respectively. SpellTower, anyone?
33. In 2013, mobile phones have overtaken PCs as the most common web access devices worldwide. (Source: Gartner.com)
34. “I’m oughta here.” 60 percent of mobile users expect a site to load in 3 seconds or less.  74 percent are willing to wait only 5 seconds for a site to load before leaving. (Source: Compuware.com)
35. 95 percent of smartphone users have used their phone to look up local information.
36. After doing so, 61 percent called.
37. And 59 percent visited.
38. When asked why they would scan a QR code, 87 percent of smartphone users said it was to access a coupon, discount or deal.
39. 42 percent of tablet users admit to using their tablet at the same time they’re also watching t.v. (Guilty again. Some of them, of course, looking up  information about the program they’re watching, as covered in item 14.) (Source: Nielson.com)
40. Not surprisingly, the majority of 25-34 year olds and 19-24 year olds (64 percent and 53 percent, respectively) now own smartphones.
41. 87 percent of mobile app downloaders have used Deal-of-the-Day sites like Groupon or LivingSocial. (Source: Nielson.com)
42. Opportunity Alert: Adults spend 10.1 percent of their media time on mobile, but only .9 percent of ad spends are on mobile. (Source: eMarketer.com)
43. The average mobile campaign significantly outpaces online in ad awareness. (Source: DynamicLogic.com)
44. 16 percent of smartphone users have made a purchase because of a marketing message they received on a phone.
45. And half of those who purchased made the purchase from the smartphone itself. (Source: ExactTarget.com)
46. One in 10 Americans have texted a charitable contribution from their phone.
47. 256 percent of teens had doubled their mobile data consumption from 2010 to 2011, according to Nielson. Is that trend changing?
48. Apparently not – an Aug, 1 2013 WSJ report by Drew Fitzgerald reports the average teen 13 to 17 has burned through 1.2 GB of mobile data per month in 2013, which is 65 percent more than the average person, according to Nielsen.
49. In June, 2011, U.S. wireless subscribers outnumbered the entire U.S. population (bear in mind that many people have multiple subscriptions,  covering phones, tablets and workplace devices through separate wireless deals).

Marketers, will these facts influence your decisions during 2014? They should. As for my own focus, I will be paying much more attention to mobile marketing strategies in the coming year. How about you?

This sharp increase in mobile browser usage signals a significant shift in how users consume content online.

So how can your business take advantage of these mobile usage trends? One solution is to build a mobile-ready version of your website.

Here are 10 reasons why you need a mobile-ready website today:

1. The fastest growing communications channel in history
Consumers are using their smartphones for everything – information, news, entertainment, shopping, research, purchasing decisions, finding local areas of interest, and much more. According to Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, the mobile Web is growing eight times faster than the first wave of online Internet adoption. And consider this fact from Google – 85 percent of Americans are never more than three feet from their cell phones!

2. Immediacy
Customers carry their smartphones everywhere and use them regularly to make immediate decisions and to take quick action. The very nature of consumer behavior mandates that your business have a mobile presence so you’re accessible anytime/anywhere your customers need you.

3. Quick access
Typically, mobile website visitors are looking for quick access to your business. They want a phone number, a contact form so they can leave a message, your hours of operation, directions to your business, coupons, menu choices and pricing.

4. Leverage mobile Internet traffic
Having a mobile website makes your company easily accessible to a growing mobile audience. Many consumers make travel arrangements or restaurant reservations exclusively by mobile phone. Don’t give customers-on-the-run an excuse to browse elsewhere.

5. Mobile websites are device independent
Mobile websites reach all audiences no matter what smartphone they use. Every smartphone has a browser – so users can immediately find you on the mobile web.

6. Easy for mobile users to read your content
Websites designed for the desktop/laptop don’t work well on mobile devices. Asking your users to pinch and zoom to read your content is unnecessary and dilutes your message. A mobile-ready site makes finding answer to questions quick, easy and friendly.

7. Your competition
If your competition has a mobile website, you need one as soon as possible too – or risk losing your customers to businesses with a mobile presence.

8. Make a bolder statement and stronger brand impression
Your business has likely invested significant dollars and resources into branding … so don’t let that go to waste with a sloppy mobile presentation.

9. Higher search rankings
A business with both a mobile-friendly website and a standard site enjoys a distinct advantage over businesses that do not have a mobile site. Google, Yahoo!, Bing, Yellow Pages and other search engines and directories rank mobile-optimized businesses higher than their competition.

10. You don’t need to start from scratch
The good news! If you already have a Joomla or WordPress website, you can add a component that displays your current website well on a mobile device, no matter what size the screen is. If that’s not an option, then ask your website developer to recreate your key web pages for mobile surfing. Mobile browsers will then automatically direct to those pages.