By: Maher Al Osta
This global trend will require rapid changes, which will primarily affect publishers and advertisers, and their indispensable intermediaries, marketing agencies with all their components.
I will mention just a few of the most current changes relating to web content and placement channels, as a logical continuation of the article Trends in Internet Advertising 2016.
Redesign and optimization
The redesign applies to all websites, without exception, and involves the creation of a special webpage for users accessing via mobile devices, or a designated, which will be adjusted to the aforementioned devices. The available data (Niellsen, Google) show that in the last months of 2015, the most important portals in the region recorded over 50% of visits via mobile devices, while social media recorded more than 60%.
So, if you don’t have a redesigned website, customized for mobile devices, you are voluntarily foregoing half of your users. Tendencies show that the market share of internet use in the region through mobile devices will rise by 10-12% by the end of 2016.
Internet users who connect via mobile devices are as a rule more loyal and more inclined to shop than desktop computer users. Their daily habits are different, so over the last 12 months they mostly searched information related to travel, health, cars, finance (banks and insurance companies), fashion and beauty, entertainment, weather, food and electronic devices.
Content optimization should follow other users’ habits, one of which is the Share option, as users of mobile devices are twice more prone to share content via social networks than users of desktop computers. Optimization also applies to video and photo content, which slow down access to websites because of loading difficulties. Almost half of mobile users expect the content to load in less than two seconds, and 40% of them will leave a site which takes more than three seconds to load. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have the aforementioned content on your website, because other data shows that in 2016 as much as 50% of online video content will be viewed on mobile devices.
When creating or designing a website keep in mind that most of today’s mobile devices operate on the touch-screen principle, so don’t make fields too small for clicks, as they create an avalanche of unwanted clicks that frustrate users because the user then has to wait for the wrong content to load, and then go back to find what they really need.
Be sure that your photos are not ‘heavier’ than is necessary, and that they are in the right format (PNG is used for graphics with fewer than 16 colors, while JPEG is generally a better format for photos). The content of the text should be easily readable without users having to zoom in. It’s hard to ‘pack’ all the textual content to be seen on a small screen, so you should make sure you have the ‘scroll’ option. Moving the visible part of the text should be vertical, never horizontal.
SEO optimization involves optimizing content based on keywords, but also a number of technical changes which are necessary for the full functionality of your web site. Keep your crawlable content, do not use robots.txt to block pop-ups and ads and don’t block CSS, JavaScript or images, as this prevents Google from categorizing your site, which in turn impedes its visibility in search engines. Avoid Flash video, and instead use HTML5 for production of content.
