Over four billion users populate the internet in 2018, half of whom live in Asia, the lion’s share in China. Interestingly, the number of worldwide users total more than half of the planet’s current inhabitants. Marketing on social media continues to grow and thrive, with roughly 90 percent of businesses making some investment of time and effort in 2018.
This decision makes sense, tracking the 13 percent increase in users of all social media options in the last year. When asked, social media users indicate they prefer to engage in commerce with companies that have a social media presence, encouragement to step up your game in this area.
Facebook is the social media leader with 2.2 billion active monthly users and showing a robust increase in the last two years of 527 million users. Instagram has a strong showing and growth as well, particularly in the USA and Spain. In these areas, Instagram use is about 15 percent. WhatsApp and Instagram show a two-year growth of 400 million. France, in contrast, favors Snapchat, the text and picture platform second there only to Facebook and engaging 18 percent of users in the country.
Not surprisingly, the vast majority of social media users employ a mobile phone to access their preferred application. Over 91 percent view the channels in the palm of their hands. Outside of social media, the last five years shows a 36 percent increase in website viewing on mobile devices. Japan still stresses laptop and desktop access, with 60 percent of views, contrasted with only 27 percent on phones.
Businesses curious about trends in website and web hosting note that WordPress supports 28 percent of the web shown through its 15.5 billion monthly page views in 2018. Preferred servers are Apache at 46.9 percent and Nginx at 37.8 percent. Among search engines, Google is most popular in 2018, logging 3.5 billion searches daily.
Domain names are often idle, with 75 percent parked at inactive websites. The .COM names number 132 million, with 46.5 percent of websites using this moniker. Google is busy with copyright infringement, fielding URL removal requests of more than 68 million in January 2018. Since 1993, the number of hosts in the domain name system has reached over a billion.
Trending is the shift from keyboard or touchscreen searches to voice-activated searches. Over one billion searches by month are initiated by voice. Experts predict this number is due to continue increasing, making it a digital marketing strategy to consider in 2018.
Although shoppers abandon nearly 80 percent of their virtual carts, eCommerce continues its strong showing, with apps like Amazon and Walmart leading the way. At least 60 percent of consumers use online sources to research purchases regardless of when the ultimate purchase is made. Those lonely carts are an opportunity to re-engage customers through other online efforts.
All of these tidbits combine to give businesses a quick peek at trends and tendencies in the digital marketing world. Review your strategies with an eye to where you stand compared to other companies and use all options at your disposal creatively and profitably.
