If Your Website Isn't Mobile Friendly, Google Will Punish You

From Google: "Starting April 21st, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact on our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices." 

So the proverbial "other shoe" has dropped. For the previous year Google has been telling business owners to make their websites mobile friendly.  Now they are telling you that if your site is not mobile friendly, you will be significantly penalized in the search rankings. 

Why are they doing this?  

"The very best marketing comes from observing consumer behavior and inserting your message into their behavior."

More than 50% of web traffic now comes from mobile devices - smartphones and tablets.  We have seen this trend for months in the YMCA websites we have built.  Now Google is confirming what we have suspected all along.  Across all businesses, consumers are using mobile devices to access websites more than PCs.  

Mobile marketing will dominate website access because consumers are in control. Simply put, consumers are buying mobile devices, not PCs.

PC sales peaked in 2011 at 350 million units worldwide after 29 years of sales (since 1983). Seven years after launch, smartphones and tablets have sold more than 1.2 billion units.  So Google is merely following consumer behavior.

It is important to realize that Google's primary mission is to provide the very best search results to consumers. And if consumers are using mobile devices, Google is going to weight their search results based on this consumer behavior.  If consumers do not get the actionable results expected (access to the information they want on the device they prefer), they may go to one of Google's competitors - Yahoo or Bing.  So Google has finally decided to weight the search results to favor mobile friendliness.

So how do you make your site mobile friendly?  You have two options. One is to build a second site that is mobile friendly.  Google has said that it will provide rankings for "mobile only" sites. 

However, as the operator of this mobile site, you will now have to support two websites - twice the work.  There is an easier way.

The preferred method is to build your website in responsive design.  Responsive design means that your website reads the request to view your website, determines the device the consumer is using and then reconfigures the website display to match the device.  It forces the website configuration to present the version of the website that looks the best on that device.  

Think of the movie Transformers.  And you only have one website to support.  Thrive only builds websites in responsive design.  

April 21st is a watershed moment in digital marketing and it will be remembered for years to come. The largest search engine in the world has formally announced that the battle for internet access has been won by the mobile consumer. Those that embrace this truth will win and continue to see their websites appear in the Google Search Results. Those who ignore it will drop out of the search results and suffer the subsequent decreases in site traffic.

Do you want to know if your website is mobile friendly?  Here is a easy way to tell.  Pull up your site on your smartphone and see if you can easily read the phone for your YMCA.  If you can't, give us a call.

Do you need help with your mobile strategy?  Give Thrive a call at 419-776-7000 or drop me an email at jeff@thriveim.com.  We are here to help!

Why Movies Yield Better Research Than Photographs

"I checked the actuarial tables, and the lowest death rate is among six-year-olds," Buffett told Fortune. "So I decided to eat like a six-year-old."

Warren Buffett was joking. I think. Warren is a dichotomy. On one hand he is considered one of the brightest minds in the investment community. On the other, his reported diet is close to what a six year would choose, if given the option. Coca-Cola and ice cream for breakfast and Dairy Queen for every thing else.

But I chose this quote for another reason. it shows the danger of acting on simple research. Taken at face value, Warren has a point. The research clearly shows that six year olds have the lowest death rate and based on the "research", a decision has been made and acted upon. Marketers do this everyday.

"It doesn't do any good to sit up and take notice if all you do is keep on sitting."

Observe, record, extract truths and act. Marketing research. But actions based on acts of single event research are dangerous. It is like reviewing a photograph and making a decision based on the information contained in the photograph. What isn't included in the photograph may be more important than what is included. The more accurate method of decision making is to take a string of photographs (research snapshots) and string them together in a movie so you can identify developing trends, then develop your reaction accordingly.

"The very best marketing comes from observing consumer behavior and inserting your message into their behavior."

I have found that the best research is ongoing research. With digital marketing campaigns, I am frequently asked is "what is a good click through rate?" And my response is the same. It doesn't matter.

We are going to measure the movie, not the snapshot, and act accordingly. One of the most powerful aspects of digital marketing lies in the ability to report the ongoing results and optimize the campaign based on the results (research). If your current click through rate is 0.06% (snapshot), then our job is to make changes based on this information to improve the results. So you optimize the campaign by reviewing the web sites you are running on, dropping the poor performers and moving money to sites that are performing, you A/B test the creative, you A/B test the landing pages. In short you "observe consumer behavior and insert your message into their behavior".

And then you measure again. And make improvements again. Optimization does not have to be based on Click Through Rates. It can be based on any KPI. Cost Per Conversion, Cost Per Click. But the decision making should be based on the direction of the campaign results.

Are your decisions making the campaign results better?

Consumer Behavior - Key Metrics By Device

"The very best marketing comes from observing consumer behavior and inserting your message into their behavior."

Whether you operate a YMCA or other business, mobile is here to stay.  What is not certain is whether or not the desktop will be here in any measurable way in five years.  Mobile marketing will dominate website access because consumers are in control. Simply put, consumers are buying mobile devices, not PCs.

PC sales peaked in 2011 at 350 million units worldwide after 29 years of sales (since 1983). Seven years after launch, smartphones and tablets have sold more than 1.2 billion units.

On June 29th, 2007 the iPhone was introduced to the world. Today one third of all high school students have an iPhone.  

eMarketer has just published their Chart of the Week showing Key Metrics by Device for the 4th quarter of 2014. 

Based on the 2014 holiday selling system, it confirms what we already suspected.  

Mobile devices now account for 44.3% of all web traffic, but 75% of revenue still comes from desktop devices.  There is something comfortable about the desktop when it comes to placing an online order.

But the tablet is rapidly becoming a device of choice. Average time of site for a tablet (a sign of engagement) is 4:34 versus 4:38 for the desktop. The average pages per visit gap is also tightening up - 8.3 pages for the desktop, versus 7.3 for the tablet.  And the bounce rate for desktops is 33% versus 37% for the tablet.

Is it possible that consumers are doing the research on a tablet and then placing the order on the desktop?  Maybe not.  The average order value on a desktop is $133.17 and $131.07 for the tablet.  

I suspect that by the fourth quarter of 2015, the tablet may be clear winner, especially since tablet and "phablets" continue to outsell the traditional desktops.

Smartphones generate twice the traffic of tablets, but slightly less revenue than the tablet.  This supports the notion that consumers are using smartphones as research devices while visiting stores and shops. This is another trend that will change as the consumer feels more secure about retail transactions on mobile devices.  

The lesson to be learned?  Mobile commerce is here. You have no choice - your website must be mobile friendly and increasingly this means responsive web design.

Or your business will be left behind.  "Mutability is life's sole constant."

Was He Just An Idiot Or Is It A Generational Thing?

It started with me needing a pair of pants on a Saturday afternoon. My wife and I stopped at a national chain store, specializing in men's fashion. I had been receiving emails from them with tempting offers for months.

I found the style I liked in black, in my size and asked if they had the same pair in grey or charcoal.

"Not in your size, but I can order them directly from the warehouse and have them shipped to your house by this coming Wednesday!"

Overall I was impressed with my first visit with this brand. Nice selection of clothing that I would wear. Friendly, hands on customer service. Until Wednesday. No pants. Well with all the weather problems, I gave them the benefit of the doubt. I wasn't sure where the pants were shipping from, but I understood that the Arctic freight train running over much of the nation could have easily disrupted the normal chains of distribution.

Another week passed. No pants. Armed with my receipt, I called the store. I should have known this was not going to be easy - the store's phone number was not on the shipping order. Fortunately Google knew it.

"Dave" answered the phone and I told him my problem. "Do you have your receipt?" Yes. Right here in my hands. "Do you see the order number at the top?" Yes. "Read it to me. No wait. It would be easier if you called our 800 number and told them the problem."

No offense, but I didn't buy the pants from an 800 number or website. I bought the pants from you. In the store.

"I know, but trust me, it will be easier if 'we' do it this way. Hold on a minute and I'll get the number."

Easier for whom?

But apparently the only way I was going to get the pants was to call the number. So I did.

15 minutes later, I learned the following... The 800 number did not have a record of my order. The 800 number did not have a record of me as a client - even after I provided the store address, transaction number, associate number, order number off the receipt, my phone number and email address.

"I will have to kick this up a level to my supervisor and see why we don't have this order. Then my supervisor will send you an email within 24 to 48 hours letting you know what we find out."

"Actually, will you have your supervisor call me? I would like to get this resolved and I don't want to have to sort through emails looking for a response."

"It would be easier if we just send you an email..."

Easier for whom?

I am 99.9% certain that both of the individuals I dealt with on this issue are of a younger generation than I am.

At some level we were not communicating. I asked myself, is this a generational issue or training issue? Is it possible that this is an example of the company's best customer service practices? From my point of view, I did not receive the a satisfactory level of service relative to the amount of money I exchanged for a pair of pants (actually three pairs). Or at least the promise of a pair of pants.

And these issues go in both directions. I suspect that "David" was equally frustrated with me. Perhaps he thought providing me with an 800 number was great customer service. So was Megan, the 800 Number Operator. It was as if we were speaking two different languages. What I expected in a sales relationship differed from what they expected in a sales relationship.

So I will work harder to match the expectations of individuals in other generations and not allow our differences to get under my skin. However, it would be nice if they took a step or two in my direction.

"People do business with people, not businesses."

PS. A voice mail message is waiting for me. "Mr. Davis, this is Anne from XYZ company. I am so sorry about your pants. We have been closed for days due to the heavy snow. Your pants are in route and they will be there on Friday. Once again I am so, so sorry. If you have any questions, here is my phone number..."

I would know that generation anywhere.

Goodbye Menu Navigation

"Ok, grab a clean sheet of paper and let's write down everything we want in our new demo website."

"What's paper?"

That's not the exactly the way the meeting started, but you get the point. Technology is changing so fast, some days it is difficult to keep track of what is available and what is not.  Thrive IM is in the beginning of designing the next generation YMCA website.  A group of us were gathered around the conference room trying to beat John to the pizza.  

On the wall we were staring at the existing demo site on the 60" monitor. The problem we were discussing was navigation and sub-navigation.  From a user's perspective, how should the navigation flow?  What is the most logical progression that would let the site visitor find the information they needed in the most efficient manor? Horizontal navigation or vertical?  Fanned sub-nav or accordion?  

"I think we are looking at this from the wrong perspective.  We already know that traffic to YMCA websites is mirroring traffic to other sites.  More than 50% of existing website traffic to YMCA websites now comes from smartphones and tablets. The question we should be asking is how can consumers find the content they seek on a smartphone?"

And suddenly the answer was there.  Search.  Voice search.  You reach your local YMCA site and have a choice.  Start reading menu options and clicking on the navigation icon you "think" will reveal the answer, or...

Tap the microphone icon and ask the web site "When does summer camp start?" And almost instantly your smartphone takes you to the information you want on your local YMCA website .  Almost Watson-like, it reports "there is a 93% chance that the answer you seek is Friday, June 13th.  Would you like to register now?"

Sometimes we forget that a smartphone is still a phone.

The Fallacy of Focus Groups

Another headline ripped out of Harry Beckwith's Selling the Invisible. If you have read any of my other posts, you know I am in my annual re-read of one of my top five favorite books of all time. Thanks again Harry!

The idea of a focus group seems solid. Gather a group of consumers. Show them your brilliant idea. Let them tell you why it will never work, never sell, never go anywhere.

There are several well known problems with focus groups.

• A dominant personality can overshadow others in the group. There goes the group feedback.
• Focus groups are conducted in an artificial environment which can make it difficult to extrapolate the results into the real world.
• Forward thinking is not a strong suit for focus groups. To my knowledge, no significant new product or service has ever been championed by a focus group. In fact I shudder to think the ideas that have been mauled to death by a focus group.

Which brings me to Dan Conetta. Dan is an individual who has greatly influenced my thinking over the previous 30 years.

I was working for Dan in the convenience store business 30 years ago as a merchandiser. I was young and anxious to make a good impression. So almost everyday I would visit the competition and see what new products they were rolling out. "Dan - 7-11 is trying a deli at the the store on 49th Avenue." "Dan - Stop and Go has an ATM at their beach location." I am fairly certain I was wearing him out when he called me into his office one day.

He wanted to know why I was so obsessed and spending so much time watching the competition. I told him I was looking for good ideas for our stores. Revenue generators!

And to this day I remember what he taught me. Jeff - you are playing follow the leader. Just because the competition does something does't mean that we should. The danger of playing follow the leader - what if the leader is an idiot? The companies you are following are a lot bigger than we are. They can afford to make mistakes that we can't.

You are a smart guy. Wouldn't you rather succeed or fail based on programs you developed, rather than copying someone who may be an idiot? There is nothing wrong with failure, as long as you learn from it and don;t make the same mistake twice.

Why don't you channel this energy in a new direction. Let's focus on the following the customer. See how they behave and then develop our own products and services based on their behavior - not the competition.

"The very best marketing comes from observing consumer behavior and inserting your message into their behavior."

This approach has worked for thirty years and it appears it is still working. Focus on the consumer's behavior.  I think I will stick with it.

Display Ads and The Sky Is Falling

Part Four and that's all folks.  Conducted by Deepak Kanakaraju and also available on DigitalDeepak.com.

Display ads worldwide seem to have very low CTRs. People are developing ad blindness, what do you think is the future of display ads?

The Law of Familiarity is at the core of any successful advertising campaign.  Simply stated, the more familiar a customer is with your product or service, the more likely they are to do business with you.  It is one of the reasons politicians put out hundreds of posters and signs near the polling stations.  They know that when you are standing in the voting booth looking at a choice between two or more politicians, you are more likely to vote for the name that is familiar to you.  

I believe that banner ads still offer value to advertisers.  Not the Run of Site ads that are sprayed across any website that will cut a deal for the advertiser (More ads, cheaper ads, to the wrong audience is not a bargain) but on sites that are selected for their unique content.  Every website has a unique audience of visitors.  Speaking to this unique audience is why the website was launched in the first place.  Find the websites that your particular audience frequents.

For example, if you are looking at media websites and wondering which network TV site to buy, you should start with knowing your target audience.  If you are looking for an older crowd, you would start with CBS.  They have the oldest average audience among the networks.  If you are looking for the youngest, you should probably look at FOX, they have the youngest.

One of the reasons CTR are very low is that media buyers first need to know the demographic and psychographic makeup of their target audience and then measure it against the makeup of the audience on the website they are looking to buy.

I believe that if you ask a visitor if they want to view ads while they navigate the site, the answer is always going to be no.  If you ask them if they want to pay you in order to visit your site, the majority will again say no.  Everyone wants something for nothing.

But if you place ads that are related to the content and interests of the site - that the visitors find relevant to their own likes and dislikes, the ads will not only be tolerated, they will also generate better results (measured by the CTR)).  

This is why Borrell shows the spending on Targeted Display will rise from 30% to 70% of online spending over the next three years.  You must match the ad to the audience.  And there are a lot of new ad types that work hard to engage the viewer - like Liquidus -  that capture the viewers attention with an ad unit that can show large groupings of inventory in a single ad unit.  They are popular with real estate, automotive dealers, furniture stores, etc.  To the average viewer - they will exhibit ad blindness, but to someone in the market for real estate, the ability to see a carousel of homes for sale, targeted by the neighborhoods that are a match, in their price range - it is the best of all worlds.  

One of the other things that bothers me about the concept of ad blindness is that the CTR has become the metrics without giving attribution credit for the millions of impressions that have been generated by the banner ad.  The Law of Familiarity says that people are more likely to do business with companies with which they are familiar.  I am convinced that these millions of impressions (assuming the creative is on target) can drive specific behavior, even if it is not a click.  Perhaps the sales prospect saw the ad, it reasonated with them, they remembered the brand and later went to Google.com and searched for it.  Nothing operates in a vacuum.  

When I first launched InspectValue.com in 1999, I experienced click through rates of 16%-20%.  No that isn’t a typo.  As the newness of the web wore off on consumers, the CTR dropped.  It became more difficult to convince consumers to click on ads, but it never became impossible.  We simply have to work harder with our targeting and messaging.

Your ideas on content marketing, social media marketing and email marketing?

While there are multiple strategies on how to drive traffic to a specific website, the most efficient and productive way is to post compelling content.  Content not only drives recognition from search engines like Google, it draws in the proper audience of consumers; individuals who are interested in your products and services.  Isn’t that the primary goal of having a web site?  

On the SEO side, ask yourself, who is the primary client of search engines like Google?  The answer is not advertisers, it is people, with a problem.  Google wants to solve that problem.  The consumers search for appropriate information is their primary business.  Jeff wants to buy shoes, Google wants to make sure it offers up the perfect solution to Jeff’s desire to purchase shoes.  Every decision tree in Google’s algorithm is driven by this goal.  

So on the business side, your efforts should be driven by the same decision tree.  What can I do to get Google to recognize me as the preferred answer to Jeff’s shoe question?  The answer is not artificially building backlinks, buying links, stuffing your pages with keywords or any of the recognized blackhat marketing tactics.  The very best SEO strategy is to develop killer content, focused on the business services and products that you offer and continue to update that content constantly.  I believe one way to achieve this is to publish a blog.  Blogs offer fresh content in a way that demonstrates your expertise in solving specific problems.  And believe me, Google is looking!

So where does social media fit in?  There is growing evidence that an active social media strategy increases your SEO results.  Who cares?  I am all for social media sites.  They help you maintain a presence in the consumers mind (The Law of Familiarity) and they can also drive traffic to your primary online business - your website.  But social media’s strongest offering is the ability to listen to your customers.  Your former customers.  And hopefully your future customers.

Listening is what “social” means.  It is not designed for advertising (even though social media platforms offer advertising programs), it is designed for communicating.  Talking.  Listening.  Not planning your next message and scheduling it for distribution next Tuesday at 5:37pm (because that is when most individuals check their Twitter/Facebook/Google+ accounts.

Listen.

One of the problems with social media rarely talked about is that you are building your business on someone else’s property.  As explained in The Malling of America, you are investing your marketing efforts (time, energy, money) building the business of the social media platform.  You are “renting” space on their website.  What happens when they decide to raise the rent beyond what you can afford?  

Which brings us to your question about email.  From a business revenue point of view, email is powerful.  Email is the only opt-in marketing program available online.  “I like your products, please make sure I am updated anytime you have something to tell me.”

No one asks for advertisements on social media platforms or websites.  If you asked a consumer, they would tell you to abolish all advertising.  Except for opt-in email.  

Ironically, while the frequency of sending emails varies from one extreme to the other, I find that most small to medium size businesses send email too infrequently.  They will ply the trades with countless advertisements to uninterested consumers, but are afraid to market to their own clients for fear of scaring them off.