A few days ago I came across a very interesting slide deck by Michael Lanz, Industry Director at Google (shared by one of my Google+ buddies) about ‘Making the Web Work for You’. The presentation was focusing on the recent web trends, behaviour changes and the choice of devices available which in turn causes an acceleration in sharing on the web today.
There were two slides from the deck which immediately caught my attention, the first is this one:
How many Architects, Designers or Engineers researching, displaying drawings, viewing visuals or searching online for a product, service or business are using more than one of the four devices in the picture?
The next slide was another one which was really interesting. This slide shows the change in daily search engine queries by device by hour.
Can you relate to this graph? Does this reflect your own behaviour? Do you think your prospects and customers behave in the same way? Do Architects switch from desktop to iPad during the day and how will the required information be presented to them (i.e your website and its assets)?
Does this behaviour pattern occur on our client sites?
After viewing this presentation I had to go an check if this kind of behaviour can be seen on some of the website we manage at Pauley Creative. In order to view this information in Google Analytics you will have to create an Advanced Segment to segment out the ‘Non-Mobile Visitors’ or in other words desktop users. Once you have created this segment you then want to switch to the ‘Overview’ report and view the data by the hour for any particular day. Make sure you have selected the ‘Mobile Traffic’ segment and the ‘Non-Mobile Traffic’ segment in order to view both sets of data on the same graph.
Example #1
What can we see?
- Non-mobile traffic nose dives after 5pm.
- Mobile visitors and non-mobile visitors almost equal by evening.
Example #2
What can we see?
- Spike in non-mobile traffic between 2pm and 5pm as a result of publishing new blog post and sharing on Twitter.
- Clear increase in mobile traffic after 8pm as a result of re-posting blog post on Twitter.
- Is this Architects using Twitter (or any other social network) after 8pm? (Also see this post: What if your key audience uses Twitter after 7pm? Who’s marketing to them?)
Example #3
What can we see?
- Mobile traffic increases earlier in the day from 4pm.
- Mobile overtakes non-mobile in the late evening.
There could be so much more that could be uncovered such as
- the number of leads submitted via the website by hour – do more enquiries get submitted after 6pm when your audience are most likely to be researching?
- does traffic to your website increase from tablet devices during the weekend – useful if you are targeting homeowners
- the number of leads generated via a returning visitor the next day (i.e. conducted research on day 1, submitted enquiry day 2)
- the number of visitors to specific sections of the website via a mobile/table device (e.g. blog, literature page, image gallery)
Why is any of this even important?
Your target audience, be it Architects, Engineers or the Home Owner, is already using multiple devices and technologies at various points throughout the day to search, locate and view multiple types of information at any stage of a project or need. What’s important is to understand when your audience is most likely to be researching for your products and then ensuring that your information is presented in the most usable manner no matter what the device. Are you making it easy for your audience to do what they need to do?
Example scenarios:
- Architect on site who is using an tablet to show the client some visuals of your product in situ.
- Designer viewing your image gallery on an a smartphone.
- Engineer on a building site using an tablet looking at your product installation information.
- Specialist Contractor using a smartphone to find a local stockist of your product or for spares.
- Architect on Twitter reading your blog content on a smartphone.
- Home Owner searching on an tablet device for a solar panel contractor on a Sunday evening
And so on. Not only do you need to have a website which converts traffic into leads but you also need a website which is usable on other devices and screens.
In my next post I will take a look at responsive website design, which is essentially designing one website for different screen sizes using various methods. So until next time, just think about how your audience is interacting and engaging with your marketing assets. Are you making the experience a good one?
If you are currently putting a business case together for introducing mobile marketing as part of your broader marketing strategy then you may want to have a read of this post: 5 things to consider before developing a mobile marketing strategy.
Presentation link: Making the web work for you
