The State of the Internet: Keeping Up with Digital Evolution

Recently, Business Insider’s Henry Blodget released a slideshow detailing the current state of internet business and trends. While some stats may not surprise you—2 billion people are online, digital advertising is making big gains, one-seventh of the world population is on Facebook—others are worth a look. Among the more telling figures:

• Smartphone sales have overtaken PC sales, and will soon dwarf them
• Mobile web use now represents 12% of global internet traffic
• 38% of US consumers have used a smartphone to purchase products or services
• Mobile monetization is still behind desktop despite the smartphone boom

What these stats allude to is not simply that the digital landscape is evolving with the growing mobile market, but that marketers are struggling to adapt to these changes, missing opportunities and leaving money on the table along the way. The struggle is largely due to a lack of focus on how consumers actually interact with smartphones in the real world rather than how marketers would like them to interact.

Mobile opens up big opportunities to give consumers what they are looking for when they are looking for it, but it takes collecting key data and then knowing how to interpret the right metrics to deliver the right experience. Sometimes that experience necessitates immediate access to a different channel, and other times that experience is simply a nurturing process via an optimized mobile landing page. The key is to build the feedback loop to know what the consumer wants to truly grow your customer base. Simply serving up static mobile ads and hoping for clicks is a surefire way to get left in the digital dust.

How are you evolving your strategy in the modern digital marketplace?
photo credit: blakespot via photopin cc