The Rise of the Mobile Internet

Did you hear about it? Something remarkable happened last year, a revolution per se’ and it probably passed you right by. Don’t worry about it, I didn’t know about it either. The remarkable thing that happened around July of 2014 is that mobile took over as the predominant way in which people were attaining fixed Internet access. That was the huge headline in the tech world but was lost on most of us. 

This was originally a forward thinking prediction from 2008 by Mary Meeker, an analyst at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers a company that monitors technology trends. What all this means is that for the first time in the digital era more connections to the internet happened via mobile devices than in all desktop computing.  This is a revolution that you probably participated in.

Why should you care? Because this is how your customers are behaving. Tablets and mobile phones are how people are searching and accessing information. The lesson is if your website hasn’t either been built or updated within the last couple of years it might not have a responsive design or in other words it hasn’t been optimized to adjust to be viewed on smaller screen sizes.  If that is the case you and your business are losing out valuable leads.

In addition, this past spring Google changed their search algorithm, which impacts customers mobile query results. In a nutshell the new algorithm enhances the search rankings of sites that are mobile-optimized and as a consequence demotes sites that that do not have a responsive.

As said, this only applies to results from mobile searches on smartphones and tablets, not those on a desktop or laptop computers.

Further when people search on a smaller devise and they run across a non-responsive site, they are much more likely to move on. For many of you who monitor your website analytics that is why you have maybe noticed your bounce rate inching up. People on mobile phones are nomadic searchers and gatherers that go from site to site looking for nourishment and are more likely to bounce off sites without exploring links.

Originally most websites were designed in a horizontal format and don’t adjust to be seen very well in smaller vertical formats. Phones obviously have much smaller screens and are viewed in a vertical format so as a result information is harder to read and links are harder to click on and the whole experience can become frustrating.

To learn more, I ran across a great website that gives some incredible in-depth stats on mobile usage: http://www.smartinsights.com/mobile-marketing/mobile-marketing-analytics/mobile-marketing-statistics/  if you would like to delve deeper into it.

Some content for this blog was derived from the websites of http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/83483-SEO-Google-to-Make-Mobile-friendly-a-Ranking-Signal and http://www.smartinsights.com/mobile-marketing/mobile-marketing-analytics/mobile-marketing-statistics/

I welcome hearing your insights regarding mobile optimization. Feel free to post your questions and thoughts in the comments section below.

ABOUT Reed Dillon - After nearly two decades of experience heading the marketing departments of some of the industry’s leading modular manufacturers and earning numerous national awards, Reed Dillon is the owner of Creative Brand Content - a marketing consulting company. 

You can contact Reed at reed@creativebrandcontent.com or by phone at 540-488-2978.