Dive Brief:

• A new study from Google on 1,000 mobile users found that 92% of people who researched a product on mobile made a purchase within a day and 76% searching for something visited a related business within a day, according to Ad Week. 
• The research found that consumers are primarily using mobile for their daily needs: 96% said they use their phone, 73% said they use their desktop, and only 33% said they use their tablet. 50% use more than one device. 
• "What we found in this diary setting is what we've been seeing over the last few years," Lisa Gevelber, Google's vp of marketing, told Adweek, "This shift to mobile is not just a shift in biases—it's a dramatic shift in consumer behavior and in expectations."

​Dive Insight:

The shift from desktop to mobile has already happened, according to Google's latest research on mobile consumer behaviors. Smartphones are now the primary device for consumers' daily needs, whether that be searching for a product or a nearby store location. Recent data from Google backs up these results: The internet company found that it is serving more search results to mobile than desktop as of earlier this year. 

Studies like these only serve to underscore that it’s becoming a mobile-first world for marketers. At the most fundamental level, websites and email have to be mobile-optimized, but the better approach may be designing for mobile from the outset.

But while consumers are spending more time on mobile, marketers are struggling to keep pace. 80% of marketers surveyed by Adobe don't have a mobile strategy in place. According to the survey, 37% of marketers' traffic is coming from mobile and 63% consider the quality of the mobile experience to be more important than the desktop experience.

"Mobile is critical — Google has finally noted that more than half of searches are conducted on mobile, and this will only go up as computing becomes even more ubiquitous," Noah Jessop, head of data for Liquid PCH, told Marketing Dive. "The shift to mobile is only going to increase — and unprepared marketers will be left trying to catch up."