Small Changes Require Large Amounts of Time

Small Changes Require Large Amounts of Time

Trying to keep up with the velocity of change brought by digital is overwhelming, especially when attempting to understand how each "change" affects other changes.

With audio's online competition growing, and smartphones becoming a major part of the online listening distribution channel, knowing how to divide attention to various components of change is a required skill.

How much time should one spend on Facebook? New changes there push the efficacy of social media for businesses down. Organic reach to those who have "liked" you on FB is moving toward 1%-2%.

On April 21 Google also changed, moving sites that are not "mobile friendly" off search results delivered to mobile devices.

Is your site "mobile friendly"? I did an unscientific, random sampling of 10 radio stations listed at our RadioRow. 6 were not compliant with Goggle's search revision. This will result in them not being listed in mobile returns.

Why is this important to radio? In my little segment of this world, in March of 2014 RadioRow mobile visits accounted for 28.89% of all visits. In 2015 it was 44.01%. Desktop visitors were at 66.69% in 2014; one year later it sits at 51.54%. Tablets remained stable; 4.12% to a March 2015 4.46% of RadioRow visitors.

The same random selection of artist web sites had only 3 of 10 optimized for mobile. At Audio Graphics' RRadio Music, March 2014 delivered 12.48% of visits from mobile (compared to 23.77% in 2015). 81.94% came from desktop one year ago with this year's at 72.51%. Tablets dropped; 5.58% in 2014 to last month's 3.27%.

Direction of movement is clear. Velocity of change is not, but we do have a clue that it's fast.

Look at the penetration of broadband back in 2001 (9.1%), and compare that to where we're at today. We're watching a repeat in mobile. "Broadband now accounts for 95% of all households with Internet service at home..." (Leichtman Research Group) The velocity of change is staggering.

If you are working in online audio delivery, you have need to show in mobile search engine returns. That is the reason I recently spent weeks rebuilding RadioRow and RRadio Music. I am rebuilding Audio Graphics, a new layout - techies will say "User Interface" - is coming.

Important is that the rebuild for any of these is not complete. Only elements required by the Google change have been addressed. I'll need months to refine all previous modules on each page, for their specified purpose.

To stay competitive, small changes require large amounts of time. How much time do you devote to learning the amount of change you need to make?

Thursday, April 23, 2015


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