It’s a mobile world:
We are now approaching 2015 and I think it is safe to say we no longer live in a man’s world but a mobile world! Quartz revealed that that there are almost as many mobile phone subscriptions than there are people in this world. There are seven billion people on this earth with 6.8 billion mobile-phone subscriptions. With the advances in technology that these smart phones encompass, and the ease of using social media apps, it is fair to say mobile phones have become an extension of peoples’ hands.
What are people using their mobiles for?
People can feed their social media addictions without having to reach further than their pockets (or hands!) According to wearesocial.net, 77% of social network users are accessing social media sites through the use of mobile devices. Pewinternet.org conducted a study for 2013 to investigate how Americans are using their mobile phones. Here is a picture of what they found from this study:
Although text messages are the dominating use of mobile phones, this is closely followed by internet usage, emails and downloading apps.
The social media revolution:
Here’s a quick video that I like outlining some interesting facts about the ‘Social Media Revolution’.
Apps are winning, the web is losing:
Mobile phone users are not easily pleased and have high maintenance requirements. Mobile sites are no longer sufficient. They want convenient, fast and easy to use apps. Chris Dixon interestingly discusses in his blog that the future is mobile, and how apps are winning and the web is losing. He outlines statistics from Flurry Analytics demonstrating the dominating effect apps are having in the online world:
Speed is of the essence in this fast-paced society:
Speed is of the essence in this fast paced society and having to wait more than 4 seconds for a web page to load is too long for 75% of web users! I know what you’re thinking ‘4 seconds is a ridiculously short amount of time’, but is this something that we are all guilty of? Bearing in mind the excessive impatient nature of the modern day internet users, businesses need to be focusing on creating apps to engage with their target markets. Once an app is downloaded it is readily accessible on users’ mobile devices and provides an ease of users not having to browse the web for the website and potentially lose 4 seconds of their lives.
I know if I was a business owner I would be looking at social media platforms and mobile apps to eventually replace the business website.
Katrina Lynch Marketing Blogger 