Your clients are online, are you?
Friday, December 3, 2010 at 2:53PM We talk to a lot of companies about joining the social media revolution and creating a larger digital fingerprint. All too often we get told the same thing, “But our clients aren’t online” or “the internet is for kids.” ComScore has released a new report called “State of the US Internet Q3,” which looks at internet growth and usage from July 2009 to July 2010.
In it, they bring a lot of proof that not only is your client base online in the US but around the rest of the world as well. It’s not that are just going online but they are visiting social media sites, using mobile devices and conducting more searches.
There is going to be a lot of facts and figures thrown about so hang on tight.
The report shows that the US is no longer the center of the online universe. It now only makes up 14% of all internet traffic. With huge adoption of broadband, Europe and Asia Pacific now make up 68% of internet traffic; China showing the greatest growth. Still, the US has 182 million people online, which is a 9% growth over the past year.
The total number of American’s online in July was 213.6 million. The average user was online 24 days a month for a total of 32.6 hours. US spent $18.5 billion online. According to the latest census, there are 310 million people living in the United States. That is 67% of the US population going online every month.
The majority of users are going to community sites. Interestingly, training and education sites saw a 67% growth and business to business had a 65% growth in the past year. This is a tremendous growth and shows that your clients are online, looking for your business and wanting to interact.
But surely these must just be kids looking for online training or sharing useless stuff on Facebook.
Social networking is showing a 23% growth with the average person spending 300 minutes a month. The idea that social networking is just for kids is disproven. While 15-24 year-olds have the highest usage and show the greatest reach, 45-54 year-olds are the second largest percentage of users of social media spending over 300 minutes online and have a 79% reach for women and 70% reach for men. Wait, aren’t 45-54 year-olds usually the decision makers in companies?
The US conducted 215 million unique searches in July. Google sites account for the majority of searches. That is a huge amount of people looking for stuff within the US. If your clients are looking for information within your industry, are they finding you or your competitors? Take a moment and do a search for relevant keywords in your industry and see where you company appears. If it’s not on the first page, then you need to look into better search engine optimization.
In July, 40.7% of people used their phones for mobile media. Approximately 70% of mobile phone users said they use their phone for more than just making phone calls. Mobile phones are being used for search, email and social networking. If you think it’s just kids texting each other, think again. Males between the age of 25-54 make up 64% of mobile browsers, while women make up 58%.
This shows that people are using their phones more often to look up websites, use an app or send an SMS. Mobile phone optimization of websites is becoming more important each month. Smart phone usage is increasing at a incredible rate. In 2009, 173.5 million smart phones were shipped. At the end of this year 296.6 million devices will have been shipped. That is a 55.4% increase and is expected to grow by 25% in 2011. With tablet computing adoption growing quicker than expected, people are no longer just sitting in front a pc or laptop to access the internet. They are on the go and expect to have a quality experience when they visit your site.
Whew, that’s a lot of information to digest.
The point is kids don’t rule the internet. Your clients do. They are more active, more connected and smarter than ever before. As the year draws to a close, it’s time to put some money aside to convert your website into a smart phone friendly version, getting your website optimized for search engines and updating it with new social media efforts.
Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media.
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