If these analysts are correct, in a few years, 4 out of 5 people will be using the internet on their phones. What does this mean for you? Well, there will be a significant change in users’ internet usage behavior.

Source: Opera

Currently, your existing and potential customers use the internet when they are stationary – at home or at the office. They surf haphazardly, often finding your website through links or basic searches.   Only when they use a mapping service and search around a central point does the location of your business really come into play.

In this web enabled, mobile future, users’ behavior will be different. With a web browser constantly at their fingertips, the information they look for will be different. They will have new ideas and questions:

• What is the closest type of place I am looking for, based on where I am right now?
• What are the details and reviews of this product I am looking at right now?
• What is the reputation of  the business I am standing by?
• Should I go in or is there a similar establishment nearby that is better?
• Are the prices I am looking at right now competitive?
• What does your company offer based on where I am now?
• .. And countless others…

Smartphones are being built now with GPS functionality, meaning the phones can know where the user is.  Many phone applications can already use this information when returning data to you – giving results based on the city you’re in.  The practice of geotagging, or defining data with an associated location is increasingly popular, gaining prevalence with photo services like Flickr, and now shifting into micro-blogging services like Twitter.  Soon many more services will be targeting the data they return based on your location.

PRTMobile.com, as written up in CrunchGear.com is a perfect example. They offer mobile-web friendly property listings, that customers easily access from their phones through simple URLs.  The chances of passerbys looking up property listings later from home is minuscule, but through PRTMobile’s service, these listings get immediate, interested customer response.

There are three aspects of this mobile future that are important to consider for your own site.

1. Make sure your websites can handle mobile visitors. Visit your website from an iPhone and BlackBerry and make sure that users can find what they need – make changes if they can’t.  To take it a step further, consider a separate mobile based website entirely like eBay and Facebook currently offer, that streamlines the UI to be mobile friendly.
2. The good strategy is to prepare your content for this mobile future. The right steps for your company depend on your industry.  Start your analysis by considering how your customers might interact with your firm or products while away from their desks.If you are a location based business, search for your products and services through mapping websites and query search engines for them with your city included. If you don’t show up where you want to be, work on associating your location with your web presence. Ideas here include geocoding photos, updating your content to be more location specific and utilizing review services like Yelp. If you have a budget for advertising, consider location based online ads, that will pop up when users are searching in your area.
3. Finally, again depending on your product and services, consider creating a web portal that returns data based on the user’s location.  Users will know they can visit your website from their phone anywhere and get just what they need, right away. If your site focuses instead on a global product or service, instead analyze how accessible your key information is from mobile devices – make sure the requests your customers have can be easily met using their phones.

The changes and advances you make today will help your business grow along with the smartphone market.