Report by Counterpoint Research Reveals that Over Half of All Users Surveyed, Spend More than 5 Hours a Day on Smartphones

Counterpoint Research compiled global insights by pulling data from an extensive survey of 3,500 smartphone users aged 15-45 across the globe to better understand mobile user behavior, patterns, preferences and factors that influence purchasing decisions. Today, approximately half the world’s total population (7.6 billion users) uses smartphones. Annual spending exceeded $370 billon in 2017.

Time Spent Daily Using Smartphones

Since its introduction in 2007, the iPhone changed how users interacted with their phones and helped integrate varied, desired functionality into one device such as browsing the Internet, composing emails, taking photographs, sending text messages, making phone calls and playing games. Unlike prior smartphones where users still used the devices primarily for making phone calls, iPhones opened up opportunities for more computing and actual work functionality. Fast forward to today, smartphone users of both iPhones and other devices, use their smartphones for mobile computing activities primarily. Many dedicated users run businesses on their phones. Others consume digital content for hours.

Mobile User Behavior

The iPhone Brought Powerful Desktop Computing to A Small Screen

These consumer trends in many ways mirror Apple’s own foray into the smartphone world where the initial iPhone product in 2007 brought powerful desktop computing features into a portable, small device, including WiFi networking but was not necessarily the best mobile telephone at the time, given restrictions with carriers, shorter battery life and lagging in the trend in the next few years towards 3G and 4G Lite. However, the iPhone introduced the concept of apps to the world beyond computing professionals through the launch of the App Store and allowing third-party software to run code on iPhone devices. This sparked a tremendous revolution across industries, spurring innovation and new ideas, as well as offering developers the opportunity to create software on their own terms. Games were among the most popular apps initially and the quality of games on the iPhone was far superior to any other existing platform at the time because of the larger screen, graphics capability and computing power. Eleven years later, this dominance is still prevalent, although other platforms have also significantly improved and providing excellent mobile experiences. Other phone platforms such as Microsoft’s Windows Mobile were unable to compete after the launch of the iPhone as they failed to provide an enjoyable mobile user experience and functionality.

How the laptop combined the functionality of numerous office devices and applications

Essential laptop functionality is now available on your iPhone and other smartphones

Today, you can walk on any street in practically any neighborhood in the world and see a smartphone user engaging with content on their mobile device with focused attention. Smartphones are ubiquitous and offer consumers independence to search for information themselves, communicate directly wherever they are, work or entertain themselves.

Preference for Mobile Sophistication and Ease of Use

The iPhone offered a smoother mobile browsing experience than any preceding smartphone when it launched. With the use of Notifications, the iPhone helped introduce users to simplified, faster communication updates, that Apple then rolled out to other mobile devices such as the iPad and for the Apple Watch, which does not use an independent web browser, but relies solely on apps.

This conscious choice by Apple to provide a simplified and distinct mobile computing experience helped win consumer loyalty due to an enhanced and enjoyable user experience. This was in sharp contrast to Microsoft’s effort to scale down its Windows PC platform to a mobile device through all of its iterations from Windows Mobile to Windows Phone, Window’s RT tablets and detachables. Despite its initial success with Surface, Microsoft has been unable to grow sales beyond a million devices per quarter - the same sales numbers the company garnered from a decade prior.

Google, on the other hand, succeeded in making the Android platform attractive to smartphone users by offering similar features to the iPhone. However, Google’s mobile computing efforts lag behind the iOS ecosystem for several reasons ranging from cybersecurity to providing streamlined mobile web browsing, lack of customization options, lack of development tools and by being very slow to attract and retain popular, exclusive games.

Smartphone users are looking for greater sophistication in their mobile devices and are thus willing to pay more for premium devices.

Demand for a Higher Quality, More Sophisticated Mobile Platform

The report revealed that more than half of the Australian, Chinese, German and Saudi smartphone users are willing to spend more than US$400 to replace their current devices. Apple also dominated the user base in both Germany and Australia with as many as 85% of users insisting on brand loyalty.

Japanese users were less willing to spend more than $400 on new devices, despite Apple being the most popular smartphone brand in their country. This trend in Japan reflects cultural preference as Japanese consumers tend to be more conservative than consumers in other countries.

Also Japanese consumers tend to buy higher priced models and hold on to them longer (average of 26 months) as compared to Mexican consumers for example, that have the shortest life cycle of smartphones (average of 18 months or less). Over one-third of all Mexican consumers however purchase used smartphones. The smartphone replacement cycle has shortened significantly due to developing markets, which is also spurred on by the rise of newer Chinese brands that provide higher quality models at affordable prices than previously available. The report also revealed that as high as two out of three mobile users in India intend to upgrade to a newer phone within the next twelve months.

Shorter Smartphone Use Cycle Worldwide

The report revealed that Apple was in the top three most sought out brands for purchase for all respondents. Roughly 50% of all survey respondents in developed countries also subscribe to digital streaming services, with Netflix in use by 30% of Australian users and 40% of German respondents using Amazon Prime.

In addition, digital payment methods are increasing in popularity worldwide, particularly in China (AliPay and WeChat) and Thailand (True Money). This is due to their ease of use and ability to override gaps in financial infrastructure for many developing markets.

Mobile search has consistently grown year after year and Google has dominated mobile search results as the browser of choice among consumers, averaging 15 Billion searches a month in the U.S alone. In late 2016, Google released its first mobile-friendly update that boosted search engine rankings for mobile-friendly sites, while non-mobile friendly sites received decreased rankings.

Since Google announced its "mobile-first search" results indexing where mobile search results will take priority over desktop search results, the search marketing industry has been abuzz with interest and speculation when this update rolls out in full. Search Engine Watch, among other leading search marketing information companies, estimates that the official release will occur in the latter half of 2017 and into early 2018.

Two years ago, Google announced that mobile search surpassed desktop results. Since mobile is now the predominant way that people search on Google, it makes sense to offer an excellent mobile user experience. It's also clear that one of the issues Google is tackling here is poor usability in many mobile sites today. Improving user experience on mobile has become a top priority for Google search.

3 out of 4 Mobile Searches Results in Follow-Up Action

Mobile search is always happening on the go, at home and at work. Search is often tied to a specific context. A customer can also interact with your brand multiple times, starting search on a mobile device, and continuing on to a desktop interaction, telephone call or store visit.

As the following infographic from Think with Google indicates, actions triggered by mobile search happen quickly.

How do you improve the usability of your site?

Test Your Site

First test your existing site using Google's free mobile-friendly test tool at https://search.google.com/search-console/mobile-friendly. Just type in your website's domain URL and gain some insights about the mobile performance of your site - what's working and what you need to improve upon.

You can see an example here of our own site.

Content

This has to be easy to access - not pinching and zooming in for legibility. It also has to be succinct in length, to fit on the small size of a mobile screen.

Is your site content visible and accessible? Is your content consistent across your mobile and desktop versions?

Unified Site, Responsive Design

Some websites have deployed separate mobile and desktop versions with different URLs, dynamic serving and even a watered down version of their complete website for mobile devices. This hinders usability on mobile devices, requires more ongoing upkeep and can lead to a frustrating user experience for your customers, clients, partners and team.

Instead, using responsive design means that your site will be consistent across platforms and devices, adjusting to browser and screen sizes automatically. This prevents the need for future maintenance of separate URLs and technically, separate mobile and desktop sites.

Conscious Design

In addition to creating a responsive design that works seamlessly for both desktop and mobile versions of your site, you will also want to think about the layout of individual pages. For example, if you have an e-commerce site, avoid putting large content blocks at the top of a page with products towards the end. One way of designing this effectively is to add the product images first with a title, brief bulleted text and a 'Read More' or other labeled button that can be expanded upon for more information.

Page Speed

Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Gary Illyes confirmed in Nov 2016 that page speed is a factor in the next mobile update. Google already has been using page speed as a factor in terms of page rank and this will continue to be relevant when the mobile-first index is completely live and in use.

It's important to note that if a person is accessing your site without Wi-Fi and just dependent on a cellular connection, site access can be really slow.

Check your site's speed using Google's PageSpeed Insights Tool or GTmetrix. Take necessary measures to address any slowness in page loading time. Your site should load in three seconds or less. Kissmetrics reported that 40% of web users will abandon a web page if it takes longer than three seconds to load.

Google’s introduction of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) demonstrates its concern and commitment to improving page speed for mobile access. Your business can succeed in this mobile-friendly environment by providing a quick, user-friendly, AMP-ready user experience.

Knowing Your Audience

Keep your audience in mind throughout your site so it is personalized and relevant.

Real Estate and Home Improvement
For example, if your business is in architecture, real estate or home improvement, your site has to appeal to home owners and people looking to purchase or renovate their homes. Design is paramount in conveying professionalism, aesthetics and savviness. Your customers want to know that the company they are dealing with is capable of providing them the high quality and consistent service they expect. Your site's mobile readiness reflects your business' awareness and adaptability. A well-designed, mobile-friendly site with relevant content engenders confidence.

Tech Consulting
For a B2B business such as a tech consulting company, your site must be swift, tailored to your audience and get to the point quickly. Your audience is smart and knowledgeable. You need to convey essential information quickly and concisely.

Retail
In retail such as apparel or footwear, your customer expects a swift-loading mobile experience with large graphics, short descriptions and any promotions or discounts clearly visible. Today customers check online before going into a physical store to see if they can get a better deal and to learn more about the product they want to buy before an in-store visit.

Education
For universities and colleges, their customers are students and parents. Your site must therefore be appealing to both, proving the value of getting an education at your institution as compared to others and truly provide a compelling experience for students to want to attend.

Your Social Presence

The online experience you provide to your customers extends beyond your website to your social media presence. Your audience may visit your social media outlets (Facebook, Twitter and other outlets) to learn more about your company in a more personal and authentic way. This can be more important for Generation Z, Millennial and Generation Y audiences who look for socially engaged businesses.

Multimedia Results

As you may have already noticed, more images and videos appear in mobile search results, whether it is images from your Twitter Feed, videos from YouTube you showcase or other multimedia on your site. Consider this as you build your brand out and your ongoing marketing.

Optimizing for Local

Mobile search helps local businesses differentiate themselves and win over new customers very quickly through a compelling mobile user experience. Voice search has increased significantly with Siri, Google Assistant and Cortana and is three times more likely in use for local search, according to Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends Report 2016 by Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers. This increase is largely attributed to a significant improvement in technology that recognizes natural language along with access to larger vocabularies.

Data of Voice Search Usage from HigherVisibility.com

Consider your business and whether you have a lot of local search for your industry and product/service offering. If you do, having a local search strategy optimized for voice search can become a key differentiator for you. In addition to having a mobile-friendly site, also aim to target long-tail keywords and natural language keywords for your business. Verify your business on Google my Business. Make sure your contact information is consistent across your website, social media and any other relevant links.

In conclusion, by following these tips above you can optimize your website for your customers and be prepared for the full mobile-first rollout in the months to come.

Smartphone Users Use Devices More like Computers Than Phones, Study Reveals