The internet has changed a lot ever since it was released. The average person now relies on the internet daily, and this leaves a huge opportunity for anyone to grow their business or brand.
To understand how people use the internet, a good way to understand it would be the “Do, Know, Go” concept: (Taylor D. 2018)
‘Do’ refers to when a customer searches for something specific on the internet, it could be a plane ticket or a product on amazon. This is when the customer is actively looking for something on the web.
‘Know’ refers to the informational queries — meaning when someone wants to learn about a particular subject, they can search for it online. Unlike “Do”, this doesn’t refer to when people search for a product or service.
‘Go’ refers to navigational queries — which means that someone is searching for a specific website or location. For example, people who want to search for ‘Apple’ they will be directed to apple.com.
In 2000 around 400 million people accessed the internet (Roser M. Ritchie H. Ortiz-Ospina E. n.d.), and in 2020 the number went over 4.7 billion (Clement J. 2020). In just 20 years, the number of people that accessed the internet has increased by over 11 times resulting in nearly half of the world population.
Where do people access the internet from? Well, the majority of internet is browsed through mobile phones. Over 50% (stat counter, n.d.).
Where do people go when they search for information? Well Google has a near monopoly over search engines as 90% of searches either go through Google or Google maps (Fishkin R. 2018).
What can people do online? Well the answer is way to vague and complicated, but some examples of more recent things that people have been doing more frequently online are: making music using tools on the web, shopping and buying cryptocurrencies. Everyone has things to do online!
Online shopping is also a big part of the internet, by category — the most bought thing online is clothing/fashion. (Oberlo, n.d.)
Additionally, video consumption is also a huge part of consumers’ journey online. Almost 5 billion videos are watched on YouTube every single day and 78% of users watch videos online every week, and 55% view online videos daily. (Felix 2020)
Video consumption has surged over the years. The leading reason is that now people are starting to rely on online videos for more than just entertainment, but also for education and for work. Consumption and creation of videos is now a common part of most working environments, for example, a marketer will watch videos from successful marketers who share their ideas on the ever-changing social market. Additionally, marketers like myself also create videos to bring attention to our social brands and build a reputation within our following and community. Constantly adding to the massive pool of videos online.
The main reason that the internet is being accessed in an ever-growing number is that people in developing countries can afford at least some sort of device that can access the internet for a large amount of their population. Asia for example has over 50% of all the internet users, purely because of their massive population and developing countries. (Broadband Search 2020)
I’d also like to mention that whether we like it or not, new tech is appearing all the time. For example, virtual reality is now becoming more mainstream for gamers, and many people in western countries have a designated voice assistant in their homes, such as Alexa or Google home. And it matters because with every piece of new tech, you, the creator can reach a brand-new fresh audience. Amazon Alexa’s can purchase items by simply asking “Alexa, buy me a vacuum cleaner”, and this means that vacuum companies should try to rank as the top vacuum for that specific keyword on Amazon. Opportunities everywhere!
Overall, internet usage has drastically increased worldwide. And due to the surge of smartphone companies — and reduced costs of these devices — the internet is being accessed from mobile sources more than any other methods (such as desktop computers).
The lives of consumers have been changed forever, as big businesses now have access to grow more than ever before and expand in different countries and continents, everyone needs to provide more value to customers and really compete over the attention of the people. For example, Tesla has adapted its marketing, so it’s purely based on PR. They know that spending money on ads doesn’t provide value for their target audience, and by avoiding ads they can reduce the price of their cars and sell to a wider market. Or alternatively, how Tok-Tok spent millions on advertising on other social media platforms and now they became the most downloaded app on the app store (sensortower 2020).
Youtube link: https://youtu.be/czrl5BUcLqw
Slideshare link: https://www.slideshare.net/secret/wnp4OKWDtjhJi7
References:
Broadband Search (2020), ‘Key Internet Statistics to Know in 2020 (Including Mobile)’ Broadband Search [online]. Available at: https://www.broadbandsearch.net/blog/internet-statistics [Accessed 5 December 2020]
Clement J. (2020), ‘Global digital population as of October 2020’ statista [online]. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/617136/digital-population-worldwide/#:~:text=Almost%204.66%20billion%20people%20were,percent%20of%20the%20global%20population [Accessed 5 December 2020]
Felix (2020), ‘Online Video Consumption Statistics’ millenialstudios [online]. Available at: https://millennialstudios.co.uk/blog/online-video-consumption-statistics/#:~:text=Almost%205%20billion%20videos%20are,computers%20to%20watch%20digital%20videos. [Accessed 24 February]
Fishkin R. (2018), ‘2018 Search Market Share: Myths vs. Realities of Google, Bing, Amazon, Facebook, DuckDuckGo, & More’ SparkToro [online]. Available at: https://sparktoro.com/blog/2018-search-market-share-myths-vs-realities-of-google-bing-amazon-facebook-duckduckgo-more/ [Accessed 5 December 2020]
Oberlo (n.d.), ‘TOP ONLINE SHOPPING CATEGORIES’ OBERLO [online]. Available at https://www.oberlo.co.uk/statistics/top-online-shopping-categories [Accessed 5 December 2020]
Roser M. Ritchie H. Ortiz-Ospina E. (n.d), ‘Internet’ ourworldindata [online]. Available at: https://ourworldindata.org/internet#:~:text=Globally%20the%20number%20of%20internet,online%20for%20the%20first%20time [Accessed 5 December 2020]
SensorTower (2020) ‘Top Apps Worldwide for Q1 2019 by Downloads’ sensortower [online]. Available at: https://sensortower.com/blog/top-apps-worldwide-q1-2019-downloads [Accessed 24 February]
Stat Counter, (n.d.) ‘Desktop vs Mobile vs Tablet Market Share Worldwide’ statcounter [online]. Available at: https://gs.statcounter.com/platform-market-share/desktop-mobile-tablet [Accessed 5 December 2020
Taylor D. (2018) ‘How People Search: Understanding User Intent’ SearchEngineJournal [online]. Available at: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-101/how-people-search/#close [Accessed 5 December 2020]