Whether you are a believer or skeptic of the global impact of the Internet as a business opportunity, it's hard to deny that the Web is on the move. Preparing your business for this shift will allow for greater efficiency and connectivity in the future.
U.S. Websites Go Global
The reality is a huge share of U.S. website traffic now comes from overseas. Internet companies are now scrambling their business models to try to cash in on foreign markets they have largely ignored.
Many U.S. sites draw more than half of their audiences from international visitors but generate only about 5% of their revenue from that traffic, according to recently compiled figures by Internet tracking firm comScore Inc. and industry analysts. For example, Facebook's international audience accounts for 73% of its 124 million monthly visitors.
Most of these sites started drawing foreign visitors without any effort on their part. The changing demographics of their users owed in part to the rapid increase in broadband Internet penetration in countries such as Russia, Brazil, India and China in recent years.
U.S. Web content is proving popular with these new Web users, just as American TV and movies have been in those and other countries. "Web sites are neglecting a massive opportunity," comSource analyst Andrew Lipsman said.
The Mobile Web Epidemic
According to Gartner Research, mobile phone sales topped 1.15 billion units in 2007, contributing to a total of 3.3 billion handsets worldwide--or half of the world's population.
A February 2008 article by Joel Garreau in The Washington Post cites this statistic: "From essentially zero, we've passed a watershed of more than 3.3 billion active cell phones on a planet of some 6.6 billion humans in about 26 years. This is the fastest global diffusion of any technology in human history--faster even than the polio vaccine."
Of course, a fraction of those mobile phones are suitable for mobile Web use. However, if iPhone sales are any indication of mobile Web adoption, the stage is set for a virtual revolution. Over 4 million iPhones were sold within the first six months of production. The iPhone has changed the game--both in mobile Web usage and the standard by which all future mobile devices will be measured. In March 2008, M:Metrics, a leader in mobile media measurement, released the findings of a survey showing a staggering 85% of iPhone users regularly access content on the Web, compared to 58% of smartphone and just 13 percent of overall mobile phone users. The same study found 59% of iPhone users visited a search engine, compared with 37% of smartphone users and only 6% of overall mobile phone users.
It's important for your website to rank highly in search engines--perhaps even using paid mobile advertising to draw traffic. The reason is that the screen is still small for most mobile users, meaning a limited number of results will show on the first page. And mobile users rarely go beyond the first page of results.
Clearly the mobile Web is growing into an everyday utility. But is it a viable business opportunity? Google seems to think so. They have set aside $10 million for a contest for outside developers to create mobile applications. People have come to embrace the mobile device as an extension to their everyday lives. It's no surprise that surveys consistently show users don't take kindly to advertisements invading their mobile space.
However, even traditional media are getting in the game. Hearst Publishing (Cosmopolitan, Esquire, O, et al) joined Nokia's ad network, essentially giving advertisers access to more than 100 million subscribers. Research firm Gartner predicts that worldwide mobile advertising revenue will balloon from $1 billion in 2007 to $11 billion in 2011.
Sources: The Wall Street Journal, July 10, 2008 and WWW.WEBSITEMAGIZINE.COM, May 2008