Facebook and LinkedIn executives illustrate just how big mobile is for their businesses

internetretailer.com

Not only is the thumb in charge, the thumb is the future. At least, that is, when it comes to the way consumers access the web.

That was the message from LinkedIn and Facebook executives Monday at the 2015 GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

The three executives gave compelling data to back up the thumb, a term Lee McCabe, global head of travel for Facebook, used to describe mobile, traffic and other mobile metrics in a session titled: Integrating Interactions with the Connected Consumer.

“Mobile will continue to drive growth for businesses,” McCabe said. 79% of smartphone owners spend all but three hours of their day with their phone within arm’s reach, said McCabe, who focused on mobile data and statistics.

On average, smartphones owners spend 2 hours and 42 minutes on their phones each day. Facebook alone has 745 million active daily mobile users, McCabe said. Despite such compelling figures, marketers are lagging. For example, 25% of all media time is spent on mobile but only 11% of media budgets is dedicated to mobile, he said.

LinkedIn executives echoed McCabe, noting that the company’s mobile traffic has grown exponentially during the past several years.

“Four years ago, 8% of our visits were from mobile devices; today, more than 50% are,” said Joff Redfern vice president of mobile product at LinkedIn.

LinkedIn’s approach to mobile has been to design apps for particular functions. For example, LinkedIn has an app for recruiters, a news app called Pulse and an app for job seekers, to name a few. “We wanted to keep it super simple and for users to find what they want in the first few seconds,” Redfern said.

Redfern and Kiran Prasad, vice president of engineering, said LinkedIn’s desktop site has more than 2,200 unique pages and the company doesn’t want to overwhelm users by putting all that data and functionality into an app. Executives said they think of their apps like a house, where there are separate and obvious functions for each room.

LinkedIn also is working on following the success of each app through analytics and, for example, by keeping track of job seekers. If app users update their employment status on LinkedIn, it suggests that the app helped them find a job.

Investing in mobile apps is time well spent, McCabe said, as 86% of consumers’ time on smartphones is spent using apps. But app uses are discerning: Only 2% of apps last 30 days or longer on a smartphone, he said.

“You’ve got to give a good experience to stay on a mobile phone,” McCabe said. “Make the process seamless and easy. Mobile marketers are asking for too much information and requiring usernames and passwords.”