This is the year of the mobile internet. 2013 will be the turning point when more people access the internet on mobile devices than on desktops.
Explosive Growth
The explosion of smartphones and tablets is changing the way we live at a dizzying pace.
The amount of data being moved around by mobiles grew 70% last year. Today almost two thirds of phones in Britain are smartphones, and YouGov calculate there will be 10 million tablets by August.
How’s that affecting businesses who live on the web?
The Effect on Browsing
Almost one in four paid search clicks in Britain now comes from handheld devices, the highest proportion in the world, according to research by Marin Software.
Cost per click (CPC) on smartphones is half the desktop rate though, because businesses are looking at the simple figure of conversions from phones at 1.6%. What most businesses are failing to realise is that conversion rate doesn’t tell the whole story. Far from it.
Google reckon more than a third of people who search on a phone go on to buy on a computer later. Others walk in and do business face to face.
That research by Marin also suggests that conversion rates on tablets will actually overtake computers this year, but CPC is still lagging.
There’s an opportunity here for those who know what they’re doing to grab more clicks and conversion at cheap rates.
Keeping Up
Online advertising is changing quickly and most businesses are just not keeping up. Those that do chase the clicks will steal the advantage.
Google say if you’re not at the top of their search results for your keywords you’re just not in the game, because on mobiles we don’t scroll we pick from the top. And people simply don’t stick around on sites which don’t work well on smaller screens.
It’s a reality which hasn’t escaped companies like Soap Media who are advising online businesses on how to adapt, maximise clicks, and make their pages work for mobile.
The Future of PPC
As usual Google are ahead of the game, and that should send a message loud and clear.
They’ve just announced changes to AdWords to reflect the future we face. The new “Enhanced Campaigns” also mean we’ll have to rethink the way we run our sponsored click marketing.
Mobile will be included by default, with an option to pay three times as much for a mobile click-through as we do for a desktop one.
Google sense that they and other businesses who don’t target their online advertising at the mobile market as aggressively as they do desktops are ignoring a large and growing pool of possibilities.
Conversion Rate Growth
It’s hard for businesses to keep on top of the twists and turns of consumer behaviour, let alone the complex changes the likes of Google throw up time and time again.
It’s increasingly an area for experts to guide us.
Think back to those figures for growth, for page-views and for paid clicks. They are growing quickly, the market is changing fast.
Is your online marketing changing at a pace which will keep up?
