Smartphones: the numbers don’t lie

Like all digital marketers, it’s true that we love data. Numbers get us really excited (we admit, we’re a bit weird like that 😄). In this post, we’re covering some of the Statista smartphone data and what this data means for digital marketers.

It’s no secret that smartphone penetration globally is predicted to reach 44% of the global population during 2020.  This is good news for every digital marketer since every person with a smartphone can use their device to find your website or interact with your brand via social.

Last year, Statista reported that, during 2018:

• 20% of the world’s 7.7 billion population upgraded to a new smartphone
• More than 1.56b smartphones were sold globally
• 52.2% of all website traffic globally was mobile phone generated, and
• 2.71 billion users owned smartphones globally during 2019 (or one in every three people).

This is a significant audience that is creating real business implications for digital marketing teams.

1. Build websites that users like.
The first (and most obvious) implication is that your website must be designed to be responsive, load quickly and display properly across the majority of smartphone devices. Digital marketers need to focus on a mobile-first approach, to develop better user experience and to keep pace with audience viewing preferences. The sobering reality is that it takes about 50 milliseconds (that’s 0.05 seconds) for users to form an opinion about your website that determines whether they like your site or not, whether they’ll stay or leave.

2. Be mobile-friendly or disappear.
Google will hurt you if you’re not responsive. During 2018, Google announced mobile-first indexing instead of desktop indexing, reflecting Google’s desire to remain relevant to how people use the Internet. (You can read an interesting case study in non mobile-friendly websites. The case study shows that Google will penalise non mobile-friendly sites via dropping their organic ranking, in this instance, costing websites 50% of their traffic as fewer people saw and clicked through to their websites.)

3. Design with mobile in mind.
If you’re considering building a new website, you must design it with mobile in mind. Mobile users expect to be able to get what they need, immediately, and on their own terms. Check out Google’s tips on mobile UX , including:

• Make all of your users’ most common tasks easily available. Avoid vague calls-to-action like “learn more”.
• Keep menus short and sweet, avoiding endless scrolling.
• Make it easy to return to the home page (including a live link to the home page via your logo is an excellent, initiative way to achieve it).
• Beware of intrusive promotions that negatively impact user experience.
• Have site search and make it visible and easy to use.

(Hint: Many of Google’s tips apply equally to desktop designs – and many are just common sense).

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About us: Digital Koalas is a Melbourne-based Digital Marketing Consultancy.
We work with businesses, marketing teams and agencies to develop digital strategy, conduct independent digital audits, manage digital media buying and campaign optimisation, and provide assistance with digital team & talent recruitment.
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