Let’s look at the internet as it stands right now with some interesting stats. The internet really is a teenager about now, if you think of where it’s come from. The first website only went online in 1991, and now it’s quite mature. Also, people are comfortable with buying online. So, while there is more competition than there used to be, if you’re a good marketer, you can still win.

So, when we look at some internet stats, there are 3.26 billion internet users which is basically 40% of the world’s population is online at the moment. That will probably never be a 100% because of outlying villages that kind of thing, but I imagine that statistic will just continue to get bigger and bigger and bigger. In places like Australia, I would say, the majority of people are online because that’s the way they consume their Netflix, which you need to do.

52.7% of global internet usage is mobile. So this is why we say you’ve really got to think about mobile-first strategy now. So you’ve got a traditional website, but you really need a mobile version of it. So make sure that everything is responsive, and you even need to think about that with your advertising and all that kind of stuff. And that is only just going to get bigger and bigger and bigger.

BUYERS BY MOBILE SHARE

There’s no real surprises here that Apple are the best converters as far as buying online. It’s probably because as a general rule, they’re more of an expensive, high-end device, and so they appeal to a higher socio-economic community than some of the other devices that are out there. But if you know this, then you can sway this with your advertising. And out of that, the iPad is actually a disproportionate share as well. A lot of people do consume and buy stuff on the iPad because they can just sit down on a couch, they can do whatever, it’s just very, very easy, and it’s not like using your phone where it’s tiny, that kind of thing. So, that’s buyers by mobile share.

GOOGLE

Google is still the big dog of search, with 2.9 billion Google searches every day. That’s massive, isn’t it? So, a lot of people think, “Oh, search is crowded,” that kind of thing, but there’s just so many searches that are happening every day. So, you may as well put yourself forward and win more and more of that, what we call impression share. So, it’s just enormous.

So, in Australia Google has around 90%, maybe a bit more percent of search, and obviously Bing is the second big one, and YouTube is another big search engine but it’s based on video-type results.

WEBSITES

966 million websites, which is quite a few, why we were saying that the internet very much is a teenager right now, so all over the world, and all those, WordPress is the most dominant from the platforms. So, you can see there, WordPress is basically 27.5% of all websites are WordPress. Other things, you know, then Joomla and Drupal. So, Magento is the biggest e-commerce platform, that mainly with bigger e-commerce stores, and then Shopify is another interesting one there as well.

ECOMMERCE

We’re very, very passionate about this field,  we thoroughly love it and it’s so exciting. The reason why is because only 9% of all retail sales are done online at the moment. Which is incredible, isn’t it? You’d think it would be much, much higher. So, you can imagine what’s going to happen over the next 10 or 20 years, is what that percentage. So, that percentage, 9%, could easily move to an 18% and a 27% and that kind of thing.

Getting into e-commerce is like buying coastal real estate before they put the highway in, and the prices go through the roof. So, effectively e-commerce properties are like building properties, investment properties, and they can be bought and sold, that kind of thing, and they can produce awesome lifestyle and income from it too.

There has been pretty good e-commerce sales growth by year but it looks like it’s declining [refer to graphic in video]. The reason why is because it’s been growing so ridiculously and back in 2013, 2014 the e-commerce sales year-on-year was growing at 17%, whereas now it’s slowing down to more around 13% and flatlining. However, it’s still enormous and how fast it’s growing is amazing, and it’s only gonna get bigger and bigger.

TOP COUNTRIES BY ECOMMERCE SALES

ecommerce sales

China has actually has doubled the amount of e-commerce sales as the U.S., then the U.S. is second, and then UK is third, and then from there it goes to Japan and Germany. So you might think, well where’s Australia in this? Australia is actually the very top line, but when you look at the graph above, you can’t actually see it that well. It’s so thin. So, it shows you, if you’re just doing an Australian market, you’re actually just going after a tiny, tiny slither of the overall market right.

And while China might be a little bit more difficult because you either don’t speak the language or you don’t have VC funding, then yes there are some hurdles in front of you. But it doesn’t mean that you can’t go after the second-biggest market, which is the U.S., and you can definitely do the UK. Their cultures are very, very similar to ours, and very, very achievable to get a much, much bigger slice of the pie.

TOP COUNTRIES BY CONVERSIONS RATE

Conversion By Country

This is based off Click Bank, they are basically an information marketing platform. You can sell your e-books, e-courses, that kind of thing on with them on their site.

What they’re showing is Australia are historically the best buyers, they sort of spend the most per capita type thing. The Kiwis are very, very similar.

CONSUMING MEDIA HAS CHANGED

When I was a kid, media was very, very centralized. Growing up, there was only four or five main TV channels. Do you remember that? And if you wanted to advertise, you advertise on TV, or you advertise in the local newspaper, or on the radio.

But that’s really, really changed. The way we consume media has changed. We bought a house a year ago and when we moved in, we didn’t have our TV plugged in for three months and no one really noticed and no one really cared, because we just consumed on all these different devices. We’re like a modern family where once it gets to like 8:00 at night, everyone’s just exhausted and no one wants to talk to each other anymore. There’s five of us and we all sit on a different couch with a different device. Can anyone else relate to that with their family, or are we alone on that one?\

MARKETING CHANNELS HAVE CHANGED

The channels have even changed. So, all these different channels that people can consume media from, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Google. Plus Google is not just Google search, it’s Google Maps, Places and more.

What’s interesting out of that is Facebook and Instagram really account for so much more time spent on mobile then the next 10 platforms combined. It’s just so so important that you’re thinking to yourself “Am I putting my media out onto those platforms?”

Facebook is obviously the biggest social platform in the world, with 1.55 billion active users. Would I be safe to assume you go on Facebook every day? I know I do. What’s amazing about this platform is you can lay the target down to people based off their exact demographics, how old they are, where they live, where they’re interested in, that kind of stuff.

MESSAGING

Social media and messaging. So you can see here Facebook is the biggest. Messaging apps are just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. So, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, QQ which is a Chinese one from Tencent, QZone again which is from Tencent andInstagram, Tumblr, Twitter. That really just shows you the social platforms that you should be thinking about. But in reality out of that, Facebook, Instagram and Facebook Messenger are becoming more and more important as well.

So, organic post. Organic post means when you post some content out to Facebook or you post content out to Instagram or wherever you want, and then you’ve got fans and it goes out to your fans. But the reality is that organic post that you put out, say that used to go to 10,000 people, now might go to a couple hundred people. Okay? So, the organic reach is declining. So meaning…and what this is really about is shareholders and making you pay for it. So you can see there like a 42% drop in your organic reach from January through to May last year.

And the Social Media Examiner, a podcast series recently, they said…so you can imagine by the name of their title, Social Media Examiner, they specialize in social media, that’s really what they’re good at. And on this podcast, they give a digital marketer, what they said was that only 4% of their traffic is coming from organic social posting. Which was amazing, isn’t it? Because a lot of people spend so much time on that.

There is a lot to be said about knowing the stats and trends of the market, where it’s been and where’s it’s heading. I hope you got some key insights from this post that will help you make educated decisions that help your business prosper in the Digital Marketing space.

It’s a great time to be reading this post as right now we’re running a FREE Web Class Training on ‘Winning the Game of eCommerce’. If this is something of interest to you, click here to watch the training!