Still debating about whether to get a mobile site for your business?  Debate no more, because here are five reasons why you should get a mobile site:

1. Your customers are mobile; you should be where they are.  According to Gartner Research, more people will be accessing the Internet on their mobile devices than those who will with their desktop computers by 2013.  They say that in less than two years, 1.82 billion people will access the Internet through their phones.  This would continue to increase in the succeeding years.

But if you think 2013 is too far away, how about this statistic from Flurry: In June this year, people spent around 81 minutes a day using mobile apps and only 74 minutes surfing the Web.  That would mean that more and more people are using their mobile devices now more than ever.

More and more people are using their mobile devices and your business should be where they are.

2. Give your visitors a good user experience with your website, no matter where they are.  You have to admit that your customers spend a lot of time outdoors, out of their homes or their offices.  They spend hours without any physical access to a computer.

They can still access your website on their mobile phones, smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices though.  And when they do, you should make sure that they have the best experience with your site.

Not optimizing your website for mobile access can lead to really slow load times.  On a desktop computer with a fast broadband connection, videos and images usually load in a matter of seconds.  But on a slower data connection available to mobile phones, these images, scripts and videos can take forever to load.

For another, it might be very difficult to navigate and use your website on a mobile device if you do not take time to optimize it.  Your text could be difficult to read, while your layout might prove to require a lot of scrolling from left to right.

You might also be using colors that look good on a desktop but  have too low contrast on a mobile screen.  Also, note that a mobile screen often displays less colors than a desktop monitor does.

3. Great technology supports mobile Web surfing.  A lot of new and exciting technology are geared towards the mobile experience.  You may have heard about the QR code, those little two-dimensional barcodes that help you link an online URL with your marketing collaterals such as a business card or a promotional flyer.  These QR codes are scanned using a smartphone with a code scanner installed.

The same goes for near-field communication technology, which you may have heard about from Google’s Wallet service.  While NFC is more hyped about because of its potential uses in mobile payments, it can also serve as a bridge between your offline and online marketing efforts.

4. You do not have to start from scratch.  The good news is that if you already have a website, you really do not have to start from scratch.  You can easily tweak your current website so that it would display well on a mobile device, no matter what size the screen is.

If that is not an option, then contact a third party company to help you port your desktop website and help you optimize it for mobile surfing.

5. A great way to get customers.  Google recently came out with a study showing that not only is going mobile helping businesses reach their customers, but it also helps them get more sales.  Google found that 95% of smartphone users have searched for local information, and out of those who did, 59% visited the stores or physical location of the companies they’ve searched and 61% called the business.  What’s more important, 9 out of 10 people who searched for local information acted within 24 hours, whether it’s to visit the store or buy something from the business.