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!

How Beacons Send Ads To Your Phone

I could add some information and comments, but this article does a great job of explaining how beacons work in eight simple slides!

From Start To Finish, This Is How Beacons Send Ads To Your Phone While You're Shopping


Read more:  http://www.businessinsider.com/how-beacon-ad-campaigns-work-2014-12?op=1#ixzz3MGCHimu0

Why Digital is So Important to TV Broadcasters

A lot of people ask me why local broadcast TV stations are investing so heavily in digital.  In a recent article on BusinessWeek.com - Aereo's Day in Court Won't End TV as We Know It - I found the following two charts. 

Note that the number of hours that the Average User watches broadcast TV continues to decline - from close to 700 hours per user per year in 2004 to a little more than 600 hours in 2012.

While the revenue from retransmission fees continues to increase - from next to nothing in 2006 to 10% of revenue in 2012.  Almost $4 billion dollars.

In 2013, time spent with digital media among US adults surpassed time spent with TV for the first time—with mobile driving the shift.

So what we see...

• Consumers are watching less TV.
• Broadcast stations are compensating for this loss in ratings (revenue) by raising retransmission fees. 
• Consumers are spending more time with digital today than they do watching TV.

As some point, the rising price of retransmission fees will level off as the dwindling audience becomes less valuable to cable systems and other retransmission subscribers.  Broadcasters are looking for new revenue opportunities. 

Consider that Broadcast TV is actually in the content business.  We produce content and hopefully the viewing public watches it.  And consumers are telling us through their behavior that they prefer to consume content online.  (The very best marketing comes from observing consumer behavior and inserting your message into their behavior.) 

So we invest in digital because we are simply following consumer behavior .  Our job is to develop great content and let the consumer watch it any way they prefer! 

Do People Really Watching Video on a Mobile Phone?

Recently a client asked me, "Do people really watch video on a smartphone?  Maybe kids, but certainly not people the age of my clients."  

 

Sorry, but the answer is yes they do.

 

Below is information from an article on eMarketer.com on this topic.  It is dated Q2 2012, so I imagine the numbers have continued to grow.

Among other findings:

• “The growth of the mobile video audience is impressive. eMarketer expects the number of smartphone video viewers in 2014 to hit nearly 87 million, or more than one-quarter of the total US population.”
• “In Q2 2012, the average US mobile subscriber spent 5 hours and 20 minutes per month watching video on a mobile phone, according to Nielsen.”
•  “Mobile video advertising serves several potential objectives and offers a number of possible benefits for marketers, including: It cuts through the clutter.”
• “Multitasking is the enemy of branding. The requirements for branding include full-screen, immersive content,” said Ujjal Kohli, CEO at Rhythm NewMedia. “The stunning thing about tablets and smartphones is that somehow these systems have been designed to single-task when video is played. And it’s full-screen.”

As you can see in the chart below, the “average” consumer spends 5 hours and 20 minutes per month watching video on a mobile phone.  And while consumers ages 12-17 age lead the way with 7 hours 10 minutes per month, every age group admits to spending time watching video on a mobile device.  This research is one of the reasons we are streaming our newscasts online. 

 

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

10 Surprising Social Media Statistics...

Here is an article I found on TheNextWeb.com that is a fun and informative!

10 surprising social media statistics that might make you rethink your social strategy

Highlights:

·       The fastest growing demographic on Twitter is the 54-64 year age bracket

·       189 million Facebook Users are “mobile only”

·       You Tube reaches more US adults age 18-34 than any cable network

·       Every second two new members join Linked In

·       Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web

·       Linked In Has  lower percentage of active users than Pinterest, Google+, Twitter and Facebook

·       93% of marketers use social media for business

·       25% of smartphone owners ages 18-44 say they can’t recall the last time their smartphone wasn’t next to them

·       Even though 62% of marketers blog or plan to blog, only 9% of US marketing companies employ a full time blogger

·       25% of Facebook users don’t bother with privacy settings

Enjoy and here’s to a successful 2014.

 

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

As we all know, the mobile revolution has arrived.  For the previous three months in a row, the mobile traffic to KSAT properties exceeds the traffic generated on the “mother ship” – the desktop version of KSAT.com.  Life has changed and we embrace it.  “It doesn’t do any good to sit up and take notice if all you do is keep on sitting.”

It is no longer a case of whether or not your web site should support mobile devices.  Mobile support is what the consumer expects. 

The most compelling reason to focus on mobile is that consumers are moving their digital engagement away from desktops and onto mobile devices – Smartphones and Tablets.  Fourth Quarter 2011 was a watershed moment – it was the first quarter that mobile devices outsold desktop/laptops.  “Total worldwide PC sales fell 14 percent to 76.3 million units in the first quarter, IDC said on Wednesday, exceeding its forecast of a 7.7 percent drop. It was the fourth consecutive quarter of year-on-year declines…”   

33%Of Paid-Search Clicks Coming From Mobile Devices

·       “U.S. advertisers have already spent nearly 50% more on paid-search ads in 2013 compared with the previous year, with click-through rates rising 14.1%.”

·       Consumer behavior drove brand marketers and retailers to make search marketing investments early in the season -- in particular, the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving. By getting a jump on the holidays, brands managed to connect with those consumers starting their shopping earlier, due to the reduced number of post-Cyber Monday shopping days this year. So far among Kenshoo clients, the 2013 shopping season generated record-high online revenue for U. S. paid-search retailers with a 30 7% YoY increase compared with 2012. 

Reaching the Mobile Holiday Shopper

Consumers are so increasingly connected that some argue we never actually go shopping -- we are always shopping. Consider the following:

• 44% of all email opens currently occur on mobile devices
• More than 1 billion smartphones were in consumers' pockets at the beginning of 2013
• 4 out of 5 minutes on a smartphone are spent engaging with an app
• 1 in 3 minutes spent online is now spent on devices other than PCs. Marketers must have both, a mobile app and a mobile Web site, or they run the risk of alienating their customer base
• Smartphone ownership tipped the scales to comprise 58% of all mobile phones in the U.S. in 2012 and is expected to reach 83% of all mobile ownership by 2017
• 62% of marketers will increase their budgets for mobile in 2013

Here is a link to download the eMarketer 2014 Snapshot of Digital Media Usage.  Some of the highlights:

·       Growth in Facebook usage has slowed to a crawl, with a 3% increase expected for 2014.

·       Mobile is hot.  Double digit growth against all social media sites.

·       98.2% if smartphone users are mobile internet users.

·       Video consumption continues to grow on mobile devices.

·       51.8% of tablet users will buy online this year.

Peter Townshend of The Who said it best in Going Mobile.

“I'm goin' home
And when I wanna go home
I'm goin' mobile”

He was only 42 years ahead of his time… 

How the Mobile Category is Affecting Holiday Shopping

One of the most frequent questions I receive, especially this time of year, revolves around how the mobile category is affecting holiday shopping.  Here are links to three articles that may provide a little clarity! 

Why You're More Likely To Buy Something When Shopping On Your iPad

·       People tend to increase the value of an item the moment they take ownership of it. Psychologists call this the "endowment effect."

·       One recent study found that people who touched an item felt an increased sense of ownership toward it. A follow-up study found that simply imagining touching an object produced the same possessive feeling.

·       In the iPad condition, the endowment effect thrived. On average, test participants using the tablet wanted to sell their item for significantly more than those using the laptop (roughly $213 to $154). Pressing a finger against a digital image on a fake website in a laboratory--that's all it took to make people feel like they owned an item, and to value it more as a result.

People window-shop on their iPhones, but actually buy things on their iPads

·        Americans spent $3 billion shopping online on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, and a quarter of those sales were made with smartphones and tablets, according to Adobe….

·       The trend really applies more specifically to Apple’s iPhones, which drove $126 million in sales, and iPads, which were responsible for $417 million…

·        Adobe said that online shopping on Black Friday peaked between 11am and noon ET, with $150 million in sales that hour…

HolidayWrap: Mobile Jumps in Visits, Order Size & Sales

·       While mobile traffic from Thanksgiving through Sunday accounted for much (41%) of all online traffic, it increased more than a third (35%) from the same period last year, based on the IBM data.

·       Survey Analytics found that while many (62%) of Black Friday shoppers did their shopping online, a third (33%) shopped on mobile phones.

·       Smartphone…  visits increased 69%, page views increased 103%, average order size increased 16% and mobile sales increased 258%.

 

 

"All that we are is the result of what we have thought."
Buddha