Web Design Must Change For More Effective Online Marketing
How content is delivered and the device it is browsed on is shifting fast!
The reasons I felt compelled to attend the 2012 Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas were completely different this year. In the past, every few years, I have gone to the CES, (starting in 1986), to see the new consumer electronic toys. Back then personal video recording technology, portable electronics and stereo television were all the rage. Cutting edge technology included Sony CD walkman’s, BetaHiFi and flat screen CRT televisions. How things have changed. At the 2008 CES, entertainment was still a center piece of the show. Then the next best thing in LCD and plasma screen resolution, size and contrast seemed was what was important. In 2008 I could already smell what was coming.
CES appeals to two kinds of attendees beyond the vendors. People business representatives wanting to buy and people browsing dream technology. The first category of attendees is pretty invisible as they do most their real business in private rooms, networking behind the scenes. The second version, the browsers, are identifiable by where they are and what they are doing. In 2008 some of the most active places, where people lingered the longest were at vendor displays where mobile phone technology was being displayed. By far cellular phone displays of companies like Motorola, Samsung and Blackberry were far busier than other consumer technology areas.
Move forward to 2012…
After about an hour on the first of three days at the 2012 CES, the future was clear. That conclusion was I’d probably not need to ever attend CES again. The reason was two-fold. One, the message was very clear that the future has been and always be about collecting data. The second reason is that via existing on-line media resources, I would be able to find out what was relevant in real-time, faster, cheaper and with less physical effort. CES is huge and just moving about the show is like hiking the Andes in LA traffic. At some point CES becomes more noise than information.
So what does this have to do with web design and why should it matter you? CES didn’t really tell me anything new. Booths focused on mobile phones and small browsing devices were the loudest and busiest places. The biggest differences is how all those devices work and how people use them to consume data. What has also changed is how use of the Internet is turning people into data. In the case of your website, the latter isn’t a primary focus and a series of blogs unto itself. On the other hand, how people are using the Internet is so important that you should be considering how you will change your approach to your Internet marketing.
The future of your on-line marketing is today
Let us take a simple metric to illustrate this change. In 2012, mobile browsing platforms will outsell desktops and laptops combined. World-wide, this shift is so massive that it pretty much renders desktops and laptops as obsolete devices when it comes to consuming Internet data. Note I said “consuming”. That means the act of acquiring, not creating information, products, or services on line. As it is right now, I would venture that you browse more on your mobile phone, IPad, IPhone, Kindle, IPod, Android Phone, Blackberry or Windows Phone than your desktop. It is likely that in the last few years you have spent more on mobile browsing devices such as browser equipped tablets and cell phones than you have on laptops or desktops. It is also likely that the cumulative acquiring of Internet data of your family is weighs in favor of personal browsing devices.
Simply put, people use smaller devices to browse the net and your website needs to address this trend.
Making a plan for the future if you want your marketing to remain relevant
If you are thinking about how this affects your browsing, time to start. The place to start is by looking at your website on all kinds of browsers even if you have to co-opt your friends mobile phone or other portable browsing device! Is your website even functional on a Blackberry? Is your site a pain on an IPad? Can you read it on a small, Android based phone> If the answer to any of these isn’t yes, your online marketing is obsolete. If your site is hard to read, navigate or a big pain in the but to scroll around, time for a change is yesterday. Simply put yourself in the mobile browsing shoes of your target client and think, “would I linger on my own website if I had to browse it on a mobile device?”. If the answer is no, time to take some immediate action.
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