GoDaddy Inc. (NYSE: GDDY), the world’s largest cloud platform dedicated to small, independent ventures, today unveiled user data from its new GoCentral website and e-commerce platform that points to mobile becoming “the new normal” for website building, commerce and web browsing.

Launched in February, GoCentral is a new service that combines a mobile-optimized website builder with an integrated set of marketing and e-commerce tools. It enables anyone, including technology novices, to easily design a website in under an hour, even on a mobile phone. All websites created via GoCentral are fully mobile responsive, to ensure a professional look and easy browsing on a phone or tablet.

GoCentral’s latest mobile usage data shows a significant shift in the way both small businesses and consumers build and use small business websites:

GoCentral Mobile Usage:

• 20 percent of active GoCentral websites were started, edited or published on a mobile device. This is more than double the rate from GoDaddy’s previous website building tool.
• 65 percent of e-commerce purchases, which include Apple Pay, PayPal and credit card payments on online stores, are being made by customers on a mobile phone.
• 53 percent of all visitor traffic to GoCentral websites is from phones and tablets.
• 80 percent of sites built on mobile phones with GoCentral are published within the first day.

Erin Donahue, owner of Brooklyn-based E-Walks Dog Walking and Pet Sitting, recently built a new version of www.ewalksdogs.com using GoCentral. “I built it on my iPhone and iPad in about 45 minutes,” Donahue said. “It used to be a pain to go on the desktop to do it. I’m so glad you can publish from a mobile device.”

“The explosion of mobile usage fundamentally changes what is required to be successful online,” said GoDaddy Senior Vice President, Presence and Commerce Lauren Antonoff. “We built GoCentral to empower anyone to create fully functional sites from their phones, and to ensure that every GoCentral site works great on mobile, regardless of what device it was built on. Our real-world results demonstrate that delivering on this promise enables people to get online fast, even those who think they don’t have the time or technical skills. We’re not just shifting how people are creating websites, we’re helping people who wouldn’t have made their own site get it off their to-do list and into the world.”

New GoCentral features
Key to GoCentral’s success is constant product iteration that delivers new features every week aimed at reducing friction and increasing sales for small businesses.

“GoCentral customers are experts in their businesses, but they don’t necessarily know what makes an online presence work,” Antonoff continued. “We’re committed to our customers’ success, so we focus on how their potential buyers behave and introduce capabilities like Apple Pay and abandoned cart recovery to make sure they using the best practices traditionally reserved for only the biggest businesses.”

Today, GoDaddy announced the following new mobile-focused features:

• SMS messaging for ecommerce: GoCentral customers can now receive notifications for new orders via text message with a link to manage fulfillment on-the-go.
• PayPal One Touch: provides a quick way to pay without having to enter card details on a mobile keypad.
• This week, GoCentral is launching Tap to Buy with Apple Pay directly from a product description: enables purchasing without any online cart checkout process. It increases conversion for single item orders which are common for small business.

Along with these mobile updates, a new blog feature has been added to GoCentral, enabling users to import a blog feed from another website. This complements the GoCentral’s integrated marketing features including SEO tools, Facebook Page syndication and email marketing.

To find out more about GoDaddy GoCentral, visit https://www.godaddy.com/gocentral.

For more detailed data on this topic, please refer to this article on the GoDaddy blog: [
https://www.godaddy.com/garage/smallbusiness/launch/what-the-mobile-technology-explosion-means-for-small-business-websites-infographic.

*Pew Research Center reports that 77% of Americans own a smartphone, up from 35% in 2011

About GoDaddy
GoDaddy powers the world’s largest cloud platform dedicated to small, independent ventures. With nearly 17 million customers worldwide and over 71 million domain names under management, GoDaddy is the place people come to name their idea, build a professional website, attract customers and manage their work. Our mission is to give our customers the tools, insights and the people to transform their ideas and personal initiative into success. To learn more about the company visit www.GoDaddy.com.