So far this year, the number of mobile users visiting marketers? Web sites is hovering around 30 percent, making it more imperative than ever for brands to have a mobile presence.

According to new data from Branding Brand, which develops mobile commerce sites and apps for many leading brands, mobile visits as a share of total visits reached 30.94 percent in April, up 208 percent from last year. Yet many marketers still do not have a mobile presence, putting them at significant risk of losing valuable sales.

?At 30 percent, if you are not in mobile, you are going to be out of business in the next year,? said Jeremy Black, director of business development at Xtreme Labs, Toronto. ?For pure play online retailers and retailers with a contextually sensitive proposition such as Gilte Group, 30 percent is the normal.

?Over time, any organization is probably going to end up at over 30 percent of traffic coming from mobile while contextually-sensitive marketers will eventually see over 90 percent of their traffic come from mobile,? he said.

Some miss out
While last year, 10 percent seemed to be the magic number when it came mobile?s share of traffic, this year the number is between 20 percent and 30 percent on a regular basis for many marketers. So it is shocking to hear that a lot of marketers still do not have a mobile presence.

When Xtreme Labs reviewed the mobile presence of leading retailers it found 30 that did not have any native experience at all.

Per Branding Brand?s numbers, for smartphones alone, the share of visits reached 18.8 percent in April, up 59.8 percent year-over-year. Tablet visits reached 12.12 percent, up 50.1 percent.

The traffic numbers so far this year follow the busy holiday period, which saw the total number of mobile visits reach unprecedented new highs.

While mobile traffic levels dropped somewhat in January, they still continued to surpass the levels seen before the beginning of the holiday period by a wide margin, according to Branding Brand's data.

Orders grow, too
It's not just traffic that is growing. Smartphone orders jumped 84.75 percent for a total share of 4.9 percent in April while tablet orders grew 52.1 percent for a total of 11.33 percent.

The numbers also show that there was a significant jump in the number of smartphone page views in April, up 92.7 percent. This suggests smartphone users are actually browsing around more on mobile sites.

"As mobile traffic increases, so does C-suite interest," said Chris Mason, co-founder and CEO of Branding Brand, Pittsburgh, PA.

"Now that mobile has evolved from a nice-to-have to a must-have, the stakeholders are also changing,? he said. ?This is no longer a side project for one person in marketing or e-commerce."

Success begets success
The surge in mobile traffic being driven by continued growth in mobile penetration levels.

But, it goes beyond just that.

?Success begets success,? Xtreme Labs? Mr. Black said. ?People are starting to develop expectations that marketers will be on mobile and once that becomes the user expectation, they become fast followers.

The jump in traffic happening across a wide variety of marketers? sites, too.

For example, MyWebGrocer, which developers ecommerce, marketing and data platforms for grocery retailers, is reporting a significant jump in traffic from mobile for its clients.

?We are seeing across all of our platform that anywhere from 10 percent to 30 percent of traffic is coming from mobile ? this is for non-mobile Web sites,? said Rebecca Roose, senior product marketing manager at MyWebGrocer, Winooski, VT.

?The surprising piece is how fast it is growing,? she said. ?From Q4 last year to Q1 this year, it is a huge hockey stick.?

Final Take
Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Marketer, New York