One of the big changes in online marketing this year is the use of smartphones.
Mobile has been a discussion point for a few years, but this year seems to really be a breaking point.
People are using their smartphones to access all kinds of online content. Now, two new studies shared on eMarketer show that people are accessing news sites and even managing their investments with their smartphones.
Here is the point from the article Mobile Gives Newspapers A Boost In The UK:
News sites are reaping significant rewards from the consumer shift toward mobile devices in the UK, with the number of unique visitors to mobile newspaper sites rising 39% year over year to 13.5 million in December 2013, according to research conducted by comScore GSMA Mobile Media Metrics cited by Newsworks. Page views saw a 63% year-over-year increase, as well.
And here is the second part from Consumers Buy Into Digital Investing:
comScore calculated that 172.0 million US internet users accessed business- or finance-related content in September 2013—approximately 76% of the internet population and a 6% year-over-year increase.
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Aite Group predicted that during the next five years, mobile trading would continue to grow at the expense of web- and desktop-based trading platforms. The firm estimated that 9% of daily average revenue trades in 2013 came from mobile.
Both of these findings indicate that people continue to use mobile and will likely continue to use mobile at the expense of desktop in the coming years.
If you’re not planning on making changes soon for your business then you’re putting your company at risk of falling behind in terms of online attention. If you need traffic to get new business then you’ll have to make your content accessible and enjoyable for online users because they’re using their smartphones more and more.
Here is what you should be working on to handle the changes in consumer behavior.
1. Responsive Design
The first step to stealing away readers, visitors and customers from others is to make your site responsive. Responsive design is the process of making your website optimized for all devices including smartphones, tablets and desktops. It’s more work for your design team up front, but once it’s ready you’ll have a site that is optimized, with all the same content, for smartphone users. It also makes you think about the content that really matters on your site because the smartphones screens aren’t as big.
One important thing with responsive design is to make sure your site remains fast. You want it blazing fast. There is nothing more frustrating for smartphone users than a page that won’t load. Get a great host and get your site blazing fast.
2. Fresh Content
Next up is fresh content. From the studies shared above you can see that people aren’t just going online because they have a smartphone. They’re not visiting sites for the sake of visiting sites. They’re looking for content. The two types of content in these studies are news content and financial content.
But people are looking for all kinds of content including content related to your industry. Even if you think you’re in a dull industry there is an opportunity to provide something useful and interesting to your target reader.
Even if you’re doing a blog post, guide or ebook every month or so you’re still creating content. Start a calendar and stick to the schedule. That’s how you attract eyeballs and potential customers.
This one really hasn’t changed. It’s been true in the desktop world and continues to be true in the mobile world.
3. Video Content
Finally, the last thing is video content. People are using mobile and getting faster access with their smartphones. We mentioned that screens are smaller on smartphones. People will still read content, but not always.
How do you get all the content on a smartphone? A video.
It’s easy to sit back and watch a video on a phone and it’s only going to become more common.
The last initiative for this post is to invest in video content for your business.
Conclusion
The online landscape continues to change. The change is coming in the form of a preferred way to access the Internet and its content. People are using smartphones more to access the Internet. Sites with the best content and the best online experience (design) will take consumer attention away from those sites that don’t optimize for mobile.