Since each day hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. alone use search engines to find products or services that are located near them, it’s important to understand how their behavior across devices influences purchasing decisions.
A May 2014 study by Google aimed to better understand consumers’ behavior using local search on smartphone and tablet devices. Participants of the study included 5,000 smartphone and tablet users in the United States. A portion of participants completed an online survey and another completed a smartphone-use mobile diary. The results were not surprising: consumers are using their smartphones to find local information. Once they find the local information they are looking for (and it better be easy for them to do so), smartphone users are more likely to visit the local store within a day, and they are more likely to make a purchase than non-local searches.
1. Google’s gone local: 59% of consumers use Google every month to find a reputable, local business (Search Engine Watch).
2. Mobile leads to local: 50% of all mobile searches are conducted in hopes of finding local results (Search Engine Watch).
3. Local searches lead to purchases: 61% of local searches result in a purchase (Search Engine Watch).
4. Mobile users are more like to make an in-store visit, fast: 50% of mobile users visit a store within a day after conducting a local search (Google).
5. Tablet and computer visits lead to in-store visits, but less than mobile: 34% of consumers on tablets or computers will go to a store within a day of conducting a local search (Google).
6. Local searches lead to sales: 18% of local searches lead to sales, compared to 7% for non-local searches (Google).
7. Consumers take action on location-based ads: More than 60% of consumers have used location information in ads. They say it’s important to have store address and phone number in ads on computers/tablets, and directions and the call button in ads on smartphones(Google).
8. Phone numbers are important: 68% of consumers on smartphones used the
get directions or call button on a smartphone local listing (Google).
9. Making it easy for users to call matters: 70% of smartphone users think a call button is important and 77% of tablet users think a call button is important (Google).
10. Google ads need phone numbers: According to Google, about 70% of mobile searchers have used the call button directly from Google ads to call businesses (Google).
11. In fact, 61% of mobile searches result in a phone call (Google).
12. Phone calls are high quality leads: More than half of mobile callers are researching a product or service, or want to complete a purchase when they call a business directly (Google). This makes phone calls high-quality leads, leads that you should be tracking accurately using call tracking technology.
This post barely scrapes the surface of the mobile/local search explosion happening right now, as we speak. To learn more about phone calls, local search and tracking calls from local search download the free guide, The Marketers Guide to Call Tracking for Local Search.