15 Things We’ve Learned in 2015

When it comes to the online realm, it can be hard to keep track of the number and speed of changes that happen!  Of course with change also comes opportunity. In our businesses we must increasingly integrate our online presence with real life business. Here is a list of 15 things we’ve learned in this area in 2015. Which ones represent opportunities for you?

Mobile is changing everything!

1. Mobile internet usage has overtaken desktop internet usage in the US in 2015. Mobile time is 51% compared to desktop usage at 42%.

2. More emails are now opened on mobile devices than on desktops. Does the email you are sending work well on mobile?

3. Google added a “mobile-friendly” tag in search results to websites that work well on mobile and began to down rank websites that are not mobile responsive. A mobile-responsive website, automatically adapts to fit the device it is viewed on.

4. We are addicted to our smartphones. More than half the users in a Bank of America survey check their smartphones at least every 5-10 minutes, and nearly four in 10 (38%) consumers say they never disconnect from their mobile phones.

Social Media was not a short-lived fad!

5. Two-thirds of American adults use a least one social media site on a regular basis.

6. Instagram is the fastest growing social network right now. It’s mobile and it’s visual which combines two of the hottest trends. 90% of Instagram users are younger than 35!

Video is taking over the internet!

7. YouTube overall, and even YouTube on mobile alone, reaches more 18-49 year-olds than any cable network in the U.S. Facebook prioritizes videos that have been uploaded directly to Facebook in the news feed and video views grew more than 50% this year.

8. 2015 is the year live streaming came to everyone. Google has had Hangouts on Air, but mobile live streaming has really taken off this year. Periscope (part of Twitter), which only launched in the spring of 2015, now has 10 Million users who watch 21 million minutes a day.

Email is not dead!

9. Email marketing has the highest ROI for your investment. For every $1 spent, email marketing generates $38 in ROI – more than any other channel including social media, video, paid search, TV or radio.

10. A large majority of U.S. adults — 72% — prefer communication with companies to happen through email. Email is sticky too – it stays in the inbox until a customer decides to do something with it!

Owning your own platform is important!

11. For all the popularity of social media, don’t forget that your website is the platform that you own and control. There’s a good chance that your website is powered by the WordPress content management system which is used by a wide variety of small and very large websites. The latest statistics show that WordPress now powers 25% of all websites.

We don’t like to wait!

12. Facebook introduced Instant Articles for Publishers, and Google announced the AMP format – both these formats are aimed at trying to get pages to load faster especially on mobile devices. Most users expect a page to load in less than 2 seconds, and Google uses site speed as one of its ranking factors.

13. Apple finally allowed ad blockers on iOS devices and one of the reasons they are so popular is that a typical site with ads is slow. Ad blockers can speed up page load times 30 – 50% or more.

Everyone needs to take cyber security seriously.

14. It seems every week there is a news items about a company getting hacked or exposing sensitive user data. One way to protect your customer interactions with your website is through the use of SSL and the Https protocol. (You may have seen the green lock symbol in your browser.) There is a movement by Google and many others to try to get all websites to add this security encryption. This got a lot easier this year with the launch of Let’s Encrypt which offers free SSL certificates.

Data drives business decisions.

15. Your website, social media, email marketing, and online advertising all provide you detailed analytics and reports that can help you make better business decisions. Analytics are becoming central to business strategy, but focusing on the right metrics can be a challenge. Did you know that 90% of the world’s data was created in the last two years?

References and Resources