Branding is important.

Stetson and Resistol are well-known names in Western Wear. If you’ve got a cowboy hat, a real cowboy hat, it’s usually a question of whether it’s a Resistol or a Stetson.

Hat-Co (parent company of R+S), realized that even cowboys have iPhones now. Covering that 30+% of users that are coming to their sites on mobile was important.

Then we got to thinking about utilizing mobile at events; converting excited concert-goers and rodeo attendees into customers instantly with a mobile site. At that point, mobile became imperative. The instant ROI was obvious, and the mobile use-case stories made sense.

Would you build a website that works fine except no one with a Mac could use it?

Of course not. You’d lose out on a huge percentage of your web traffic. Could you really afford to cut off 30% of your users?

Not having a mobile website is the same thing. You’re cutting off 30%+ of your users from engaging your brand.

Looking at Stetson and Resistol’s Mobile ROI, here, and here, the value of going mobile was there to capture that mobile audience. Being a company that values branding, they chose a truly high-end mobile experience.

Kudos to Resistol and Stetson for taking the mobile plunge and continuing to lead the way in digital marketing.

To take a look at both sites mobilized by DevelopmentNow visit (www.resistol.com , www.stetsonhat.com) from your smartphone.

Yee-haw.