Martin Clancy, head of marketing for DeviceAtlas at dotMobi, explains how businesses can best reaching the multi-screen customer on mobile and connected devices in the face of the global mobile explosion.

Reaching global customers has always presented a problem for businesses, but the explosion of mobile connected devices on the market has been a game-changer. According to Google, 97 per cent of us now switch between devices on a daily basis – consuming content on smartphones, tablets and soon, watches and glasses. Multichannel and multi-screen are now mainstream ideas in CRM and marketing circles.

While the sheer volume of different devices on the market provides more routes to the eyes of the customer, it also demands more careful consideration from marketers and brand owners. With the pace of innovation moving at lightning speed, many businesses are being left behind when it comes to developing mobile strategies for the connected consumer.

In fact, that is often the first mistake: separating mobile strategies from general web strategies. Living in the world that we do, consumers often chop and change from booking holidays on a desktop, to streaming TV shows on a tablet, to reading emails on a smartphone. Therefore, at the heart of every 21st century web strategy should be the aim to deliver a seamless user experience across all connected devices – something yet to be mastered by the majority of businesses.

Responsive design
Yet, with the increasing popularity of approaches like responsive web design, some inroads are being made. Responsive offers a way for companies to design websites with built-in flexibility to provide a unified experience across device types. But it’s not an easy option and often comes at the expense of data-heavy sites that aren’t optimised well for mobile devices, particularly those without access to fast connection speeds.

Serving the same content to all devices irrespective of device capabilities, screen size and resolution, and indeed connection speed, can negatively impact the user experience and engagement rates. Basic user experience issues are always among a consumer’s top gripes when it comes to accessing the internet on mobile, with page load times being particularly important. A recent study by KISSmetrics found that 40 per cent of people abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load.

Without visibility over which device your content is reaching, it is impossible to deliver the most effective experience, or to ensure that you’re not sending content designed for desktops to smartphones, for example. Responsive can certainly be an option when implemented with device detection on the server side (RESS), but ultimately the choice between adapting content on-the-fly and responsive will depend on your business needs.

Optimising content for mobile devices isn’t all about resizing it for smaller screens; businesses must also consider the usability of their content. How easily can the content be downloaded over wi-fi, 3G, 4G and slower connections? Does it take into account unique mobile capabilities such as location or touch interfaces? Is it sensible to serve all desktop content to mobile users?

As well as usability, there is also the issue of responsibility. Consumers do not look kindly on businesses serving them content that costs them data allowance, battery life, time and money. As well as ensuring that content works across different devices, businesses also need to ensure that it is sympathetic to users’ needs – and pockets.

International customers
As the world becomes a smaller place, more and more businesses want to tap into a base of international customers. Considering that 3.4bn people across the world now benefit from having a mobile phone, (according to the GSMA), mobile devices provide ample opportunity to do this. However, to achieve global ambitions, businesses need a detailed picture of mobile device trends from country to country.

With new devices arriving on the market all the time, it can be difficult to stay abreast of all the connected gadgets in consumers’ hands. Based on the millions of web interactions we see passing through our platforms, we know that if a UK business wants to target online customers on its domestic shores, it will have to cater for over 1,200 different devices. Further afield, in the US for example, consumers are browsing the web on well over 3,000 connected devices. In emerging markets like Russia and China, people are using around 1,100 and 1,300 web-enabled devices respectively.

The global mobile market shows no signs of slowing down and Gartner predicts that there will be 30bn connected devices in use by global consumers by 2020. Learning to navigate the increasingly fragmented device landscape will allow businesses to capitalise on the opportunities that mobile offers. Detailed and actionable device intelligence is the key that unlocks channels of communication with customers across the world.

Martin Clancy is head of marketing for DeviceAtlas at dotMobi