How MTV Increased Website Traffic By 92%
MTV is a big name brand with a large following, but despite their long-running fame they still have to work hard to maintain their popularity. Recently, the web team over at MTV optimized the brand’s website to be mobile-friendly. While great results were expected, no one saw the huge surge in traffic that was about to arrive. The results of MTV’s decision to add responsive web design were so dramatic that MTV has now shared the results with the world.
Making The Decision To Go Mobile
The average MTV target audience checks their mobile device more than 150 times a day, and the majority of this time is spent checking social news feeds. These two factors gave MTV a huge advantage, but first they had to make the right move, which happened to be creating a responsive site for mobile.
Considering how mobile MTV’s younger audience is, it seems almost odd it took them this long to mobilize their website. Even if they seem late to the game and were far from the first to mobilize their site, the results remain shocking. This proves that even if you have not yet optimized your site for mobile it’s not too late to get in on the action.
The Results Of MTV Going Mobile
When MTV’s web team released the mobilized version of their website the results were instantly noted and significant. The MTV website is broken down into three main categories: shows, music and news. Here is a breakdown of the changes two of these segments (shows and news) incurred after being made responsive.
MTV Shows Website
- Mobile traffic increased by 92%
- Mobile page views increased by 55%
- Visitor time spent on the site increased by a whopping 297%
- Social referrals increased by 246%
MTV News Website
- Mobile traffic increased by 151%
- The amount of time users spend on the site increased by 137%
- Social referrals increased by 565%
- Also thanks to the implementation of mobile-friendly design, exit rates decreased by 11%.
Why Does Responsive Web Design Make Such a Big Difference?
A large percentage of people are now checking their social media accounts, and searching the web using a mobile device. When a website is responsive or optimized for mobile that means it shows up in a friendly, easy to use manner on all mobile devices, including various sized cell phones and tablets. This allows users to have a positive experience, as opposed to trying to scroll around on a site that is not fit for a mobile device. If people can tell a site is not responsive they are likely to leave and go to the next site that is.
Responsive web design is also important because it largely increases the number of referrals your site receives. If your audience can easily share content via social media, email, or any other online platform they are far more likely to do so. MTV clearly saw this first-hand with over a 200% increase in referral traffic due to mobilization.
Transferring your site to mobile is important on many different levels, but as of April 21st it is even more important to have a mobile-friendly site due to Google’s latest algorithm. Google has announced their latest changes due out later this month, which will exclude mobile search results that are not responsive or optimized for mobile platforms. To learn more, reference the blog we posted this month about Google’s latest mobile search changes.
Eye Opening Statistics Prove The Future (And Present) Is All About Responsive, Mobile Web Design
- 48% of mobile research begins on search engines.
- 80% of Internet users own a smartphone that they use to access online data.
- 82% of mobile media is accessed on mobile apps as opposed to a web browser.
- The majority of mobile users employ multiple screens to access the same data, meaning your site should be fluent across all platforms.
Keeping Up With Responsive Web Design
Creating and maintaining a successful mobile website is an ongoing, full time job. MTV has had a world of success with their latest changes; in fact their results are so great they are going viral. That doesn’t mean the music-based company is done making the most of the mobile world. The brand is currently working to keep these positive changes on the rise by continually making adjustments and improvements to the overall mobilization of their site.
While tablets and smartphones are the up and coming popular devices, there are a number of emerging devices being used to access online content. Some of the emerging devices people are using more and more to access the Internet include:
-Smart TV
A Smart TV can connect to the Internet and accounts for 34% of searches conducted on emerging devices.
-Smart Watch
The Smart Watch is slowly gaining traction as Apple just released their version, along with many other popular tech brands. Smart Watches account for 9% of Internet searches conducted on emerging devices.
-Smart Wristband
Different from the Smart Watch, the Smart Wristband includes Nike Fuelband, Jawbone Up, Adidas miCoach and more. The Smart Wristband accounts for 7% of searches conducted on emerging devices.
As access to the online world continues to grow and change it’s important that your website is equipped to keep up on all platforms.
What Can We Learn From MTV Going Mobile?
No matter the size of your brand or who your target audience is, going mobile is an important step to staying relevant and ranking on search engines. The benefits of going mobile are vastly important, impacting the present as well as the future of your business.
MTV has seen huge improvements across the board after mobilizing their website, although their most impressive increases relate to shared news stories. People love to re-share interesting news stories they come across via social media. It becomes a domino effect, when one person shares more and more people share as well.
In order to tap into this market all that you have to do is create content your target audience cares enough about to share with friends and family. You can follow in MTV’s footsteps and increase traffic to your website by optimizing your site for mobile, as well as publishing interesting, relevant content worth sharing.
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