Do you know what a “micro-moment” is?

Google’s been coining the phrase over at their blog, which highlights their latest search data.

What’s their latest finding?

Just how prevalent “near me” searches (the “micro-moments”) have become. In fact, they’ve increased 146% year over year.

And it makes sense that mobile is where most of these searches happen.

But the real question is: are you ready to market to possible customers that do “near me” searches?

1. First, More Data

Will consumers do “near me” searches for your business? According to Google research, these searches happen across every type of business.

Some examples they give include:

• Hotels
• Car rental outfits
• Nail salons
• Shoe stores
• Pizza parlors
• Banks

Basically, Google concludes, if you have a physical location, consumers will use “near me” searches for products or services your business offers.

So How Do You Make Yourself “Ready” for These Kinds of Searches?

We’ve covered the SEO part of this. By now, you know enough about SEO that we don’t have to explain all the ins and outs of how that works.

What we really want to emphasize: a responsive design.

SEO helps people find your site instead of your competitor’s. An attractive responsive design keeps them glued to your website so they’re more likely to buy from you than anyone else. And a useful design closes the sale.

Your digital “storefront” is more important than your physical storefront. While it’s important to have an attractive design, it’s more important that consumers can get what they want in as few clicks as possible.

Have you ever heard of the “3-click” rule? It means that most consumers will click on your website about 3 pages deep. They’ll click your main navigation, click again on the next page, and once more.

But, for most consumers, that’s about it.

Take a Look at an Example

So let’s say you run one of those stores Google mentioned people search for – a shoe store. In fact, you have a specialty shoe store that uses advanced video technology to analyze people’s feet and give them the perfect shoe for their needs and foot shape.

To engage them immediately, you may want a video on your home page showing exactly how your process works. Then, as they scroll down, they learn more about your business. By the way, this type of website is called a “parallax scrolling” website.

Here’s a screenshot of, and a link to, a website that shows parallax scrolling in action:

And it makes perfect sense for mobile users. You’ll also notice it follows the “3 click” rule.

By the way, you can learn more about i5ww’s responsive design and SEO services when you follow those links.