The internet – The gift that keeps on giving

The best present we all received at Christmas was the conservatively estimated 50,000 internet capable devices opened on the 25^th.  In reality this number could be four times more as this count does not include iPad's, iTouch’s or similar devices from other manufacturers.  Within our extended family there were three iTouch's and an internet TV with all connected to Facebook and Trade Me within an hour.  Without one of us spending another cent on our business we all gained a small city of potential customers in one day.   

The truth is that many of these users may already have access to the internet; however this may be through a shared device rather than a personal device.  So does this really matter? From a business perspective it does as it increases the frequency and time online dramatically.  It is hard to say what has driven this evolution and with Apple being such a major player it could be argued that either Steve Jobs identified trends earlier, or that they were so big they set them. We have moved from one shared PC in a household to a number of internet capable personal devices over the last few years; if you add up the number of devices including smart phones in your house you might be surprised.  Both Microsoft and Apple with their cloud applications now allow ubiquitous access to the same content from many devices.

Before returning to the business benefits let me relay two personal experiences.  My son got an iTouch for Christmas but not because I thought he really needed it.  It was more a gift to me to get my phone back which always seemed flat, had the sound turned down so I could never hear it ring and was full of 4GB of games!  On top of this I was sick of being woken during the night with an alert from ‘iGun Pro’ that a new and more potent gun was available for downloading.  The second experience was the introduction of an iPad to the family; once these are setup to access all your internet applications you quickly understand that these are for personal use and not to be treated like a shared device. 

So, let’s come back to the business benefits for our industry.  Business has understood the value of educating potential purchasers at a young age and none have done this better than Vodafone in New Zealand.  Their early introduction of prepay mobile and text messaging gave them a foothold on the market that in time has followed through into business as these consumers have grown up.  Telecom has unsuccessfully tried to launch a number of youth brands over the years.  For us we now have the access required to our products and services within the pockets of most kids walking down the street; the challenge for all of us is to start the interaction that turns them into future customers. This is not as hard as you think, as we know that they all head to Trade Me and Facebook and how to be successful within both these applications is well documented. 

Not to cover old ground around measuring website performance, but it is something we need to fully understand as it is the web for catching our prospects.  Firstly we need to understand the changing behavior of internet users matched with our online offerings.  For me I am more interested in the frequency and the length of the sessions rather than any other measure. The reason for this is based on the fact that in our industry websites are essentially classified sites filled with content.  A healthy website keeps people engaged and returning time and time again.  With the access barrier dropping and the number of devices increasing, frequency must increase.  If you are not seeing this trend you could be wasting effort in attracting new customers.  Why Trade Me is winner for all of us is that the mix of auctions and classified listings keeps the content fresh and ever-changing which drives urgency for users to return in case they may miss something.

Another consideration is the old UB (Unique Browser) which is the number of individual internet browser sessions that have been generated against a website. The debate here is that one user can generate a number of UB’s and there is double counting.  For a classified website like your dealerships this is a moot point; if the same person is driven to keep returning to your website through a different browser or device at a higher frequency, who cares? This is customer engagement and the goal we are all driving towards!  Another thing not to get too worried about is device substitution where a user will swap a lesser device for a better one when it becomes accessible.  An example of this is swapping from surfing the web on your mobile when access to a PC becomes available.  Two changes have reduced this behavior; users would rather stick to a device where their personal data is located, and secondly, most customised services and applications are optimized to the device it is currently being hosted on.

Let’s hope the internet and consumer electronics companies keep on giving for our benefit.

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