When was the last time you looked at your web site on your smartphone? If your site is difficult to read or navigate, chances are it’s at least several years old and a generation behind the technology curve. And while that can hurt your bottom line, there is good news to report. Let’s first look at the mobile landscape over the past year.

Keeping up with changes in technology is a critical part of smart business planning. Today that means not only making sure your in-house systems are up-to-date and your web site content is refreshed regularly, it also means your site should be easily accessible on mobile devices such as tablets and phones.

As recently as the beginning of 2012, most business owners thought that having a site that showed well on a phone was optional. They couldn’t see the return on investment for building a separate mobile site. That view has changed as business owners and managers began to see their own experience using mobile devices.

The percentage of people using their phones for information gathering and purchasing has skyrocketed. According to BusinessInsider.com, “Search is surging on smartphones and tablets. Mobile searches are quickly becoming the main way in which consumers find everything they need — whether it’s information, services, or physical and digital goods. “ The good old Yellow Pages are dead.

Beyond information gathering, in 2012 shoppers made $25 Billion in purchases using tablets and smartphones. That’s an astounding 81% increase over 2011.

That statistic is backed up by stark headlines reporting from this year’s Mobile World Congress, “Mobile Payments Are Killing the Cash Register.” For retailers without a mobile-friendly – and soon, a mobile-payment-friendly – web presence, the clock is ticking. Retailers, whether they know it or not, must confront these technology challenges or be passed swiftly by.

If your company’s web site isn’t easily accessible via mobile devices, chances are a prospective new customer will move on to another one they can see more easily. It has nothing to do with the quality of goods or services you can deliver. It’s all about providing a good user experience online. Where do you start?

Fortunately, good news comes with this latest disruption. Web design and development technology has advanced along two parallel paths over the past 14 months. Rapid changes in how smartphones are used have led to new approaches in how sites are built. The price tag for a mobile-friendly presence has come down. Having a mobile-friendly site no longer requires double the programming time at a prohibitive expense. PinPoint Strategies’ development team uses responsive design best practices to create a single online presence optimized for any device: PC, tablet or phone.

“Business as usual” is a thing of the past. It’s time to mobilize your business to catch customer attention and purchasing power that’s already flowing down the digital main street. Make sure you’re there too, ready and open for business.