World Wide Wow

Reflections

The Week 1 materials and topics were very interesting! I'm familiar with social media strategy as it relates to businesses, as well as how individuals can use it--for professional or personal gain, or sometimes, to one's detriment. However, I was not very familiar with the history of the Internet, and I was surprised to learn that its infancy was actually way before the 90's! It certainly makes sense that the development of such an infrastructure wasn't driven by a need for social or informational purposes, but actually for a very specific need with the location of the missiles!

One of the reasons I am taking this class is to have a better understanding of how to strategically use Internet marketing in business. This week's materials helped provide a clear roadmap to thinking about how this should be applied. Part of my job involves acting as a Marketing Concierge for our company's resellers. They are generally small to medium sized businesses, and while they are very good at building relationships with their customers and providing great customer service, they are not always as sophisticated when it comes to marketing, let alone internet marketing. This week's materials have given me some good content to be able to go back to my clients and give them a baseline level of knowledge of internet marketing, and why it's important to consider certain things.

Some Surprising Statistics

One of my favorite quotes, as it relates to business and one's professional development, is from Charles Darwin.

"It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change."

• Pinterest is only 3 years old (established in March 2010). In May 2013, they had a whopping 25 million users. As of March 2014, Pinterest had 70 million active users. Many companies have capitalized on Pinterest's popularity by calling out items as "most pinned." For example, The Container Store sends out emails featuring their "most pinned" items.
• www.express.com, a major clothing retailer, does not have a pin to Pinterest button on their website, even though 68% of Pinterest users are females (and Express does offer men's clothing as well) 

A few smart phone stats from 2 years ago

• 37% of adults and 60% of teenagers admit to being addicted to their smart phones
• Smart phones represent 24% of all mobile phones sold around the world 

For comparison, a few smart phone stats from February 2014 

• The average person owns about 4 mobile devices and spends 60 hours a week consuming content on them (that's 8.6 hours per day) 
• Smartphone sales made up 53.6% of all mobile phone sales last year 

Given all of these #s, and knowing that mobile device usage is increasing, as is the # of mobile devices per person and per household...I wonder why so few companies have good mobile websites.

I was surprised to see that www.michaelkors.com does not have a mobile site; some similar brands like www.katespade.com and www.coach.com do.

What are some some websites you have come across that don't have a mobile interface? Did it surprise you?