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Increased Customer Reliance on Mobile Devices Requires Change in Thinking

August 23, 2016 by Ronn
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I read this quote the other day: “More and more, these moments across the customer journey are happening on mobile devices. Whether it's performing a search, opening an app, visiting a website or watching a video, people turn to their mobile device to get answers or take action. We call these Micro-moments, and they are chances for brands to meet their customers at their moments of intent…”

As customers depend more and more on their mobile devices, publishers need to take this into consideration in executing their outreach, sales and design strategies.

“The trend now is getting away from an overly designed, wow-factor homepage to getting people to information they want fast," said author and speaker Matt Bailey. "Because of mobile devices—and I see this constantly in my analytics – [people’s] time on site and average page views are significantly lower than desktop or tablet. When I start to see 70% visitors on mobile—or even 80%— I need to start rethinking my design on mobile for a small screen.

“We have to design for someone to get an answer to their question in less than a minute,” Bailey said. “That requires dispensing with the fancy stuff and focusing on the function. A friend of mine who owns a marketing agency said that for years she made money on form and now everything is going to function. She even developed an app specific to mobile that provides immediate access to information. She’s dispensed with design—navigation is foremost. This is what people want. ‘I have a question and can I get to the answer within seconds?’”

In his SIPA webinar last week titled Video: What Is It Good For? Absolutely Everything, John Kultgen, content director for Likeable Media, said that shooting vertical video is becoming more common. “[Of course,] horizontal is standard,” he said. “[But] vertical is something that will continue to grow. Invest in Snapchat and they will request your video be vertical. You’ve all seen that classic thing at the beginning of movies—this has been formed for your TV screen.” Now it’s for mobile.

If you want to listen to a recording of the webinar or share it with your colleagues who couldn't attend, click here. SIPA members receive access to our complete library of webinar recordings.

A recent report from Abila on member engagement pointed to the changes taking place. They did a generational breakdown of how we like to receive our communications. While email still tops the charts for every generation, text messaging, mobile apps and social networking are all much higher for millennials than other age groups. (They’re also much more receptive to receiving an actual phone call which is interesting. I’ve never seen this statistic before.)

Real Magnet commented on adapting to mobile’s importance in a recent blog post. “While brands are encouraged to take an ‘if you build it, they will come’ approach to social media marketing, it’s no longer enough to passively grow a following. Companies now need to take an active role in communicating with individuals via Twitter and Facebook, whether it’s answering questions or acknowledging comments. This give-and-take dynamic is essential to maintaining high levels of loyalty."

“Interact with them,” said Kelly Bolton in a piece for Entrepreneur. “Like and respond to their posts. Retweet them. And ask them to interact directly with your posts.”

The blog post also emphasized something that I’ve noticed as well of late—more people want to make purchases on their mobile device. It needs to be an easy process. “It isn’t enough to simply remind consumers of a product or service on social media. These days, shoppers want the ability to click their way to a purchase directly from a social media platform such as Facebook or Pinterest. This is the dawn of social commerce, where brands facilitate a simple, streamlined buyer journey that begins right on the social media page.”

And back we circle to the customer journey.

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Ronn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 and SIIA in 2013 as editorial director…