Nielsen outlined these consumer trends in their Digital Consumer Report in exploring how these changes are affecting consumers and how content is being consumed.
Nielsen also contends a high penetration of smartphones in the market among Americans at 65 percent with the average amount of time being spent on mobile internet at 34 hours a month.
This is a very staggering number in my opinion because it suggests that for most adults digital media consumption is coming from mobile devices. Not only that, the amount of time spent on a table or a smartphone is also increasing.
I don’t believe this to be surprising at all. In fact, if you pay close attention on your commute to work almost everyone has a tablet or smart phone. Two-thirds of Americans own a smartphone according to Nielsen.
How This Impacts Webmasters and Website Owners
Blake Irving, CEO of GoDaddy, was on CNBC this afternoon speaking about the changes that Google is making in an effort to usher the industry to optimize their sites for mobile. Given the increase in people accessing the internet from their devices along with GoDaddy having a market share of website domains under management it only makes sense that Blake would make the case for this.
The major concern here for individuals that own websites can have a variety of implications depending on what you’re doing with your site. If you are using your site to make money for your business the impact could be quite significant if your site is not optimized for mobile.
The impact to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) will be noticeable if you haven’t restructured your site for mobile optimization, which means that your search engine rankings will suffer and it will be difficult for users to find you in Google from a mobile device
When users search from a mobile device you want them to be able to pull results from a website that fit into their mobile device. In other words you want the site to show up in it’s full design neatly on a mobile device so that a user can read it and interact with the site without issue.
Because of this shift in access to mobile devices Google is changing their algorithm to give more leverage to mobile-friendly websites. Mobile web pages need to be readable and eye-catching from an aesthetics point of view.
In 2014 Google had already began penalizing sites that provided a less than desirable experience on mobile. This looks to take that a step further with the release of a new algorithm in 2015
Also consider with the huge focus on mobile app development, most people are increasingly focused on building digital products with mobile-friendly programming as a priority. Some statistics according to Blake Irving contend that 50% of search terms in Google are coming from mobile devices.
For site owners that comply Google is handing out mobile-friendly labels which can aid in boosting your search engine rankings if you past their test.
