Mobile facts law firm publishers ought to keep in mind

Frédéric Filloux (@filloux), the general manager for digital operations at Les Echos, the leading business media group in France shares that by the end of 2014, many news media will collect around 50% of their page views via mobile devices (smart phones and tablets).

Though Filloux is reporting on the news media, not law firm blog publishers, law firms ought take note of the figures and trends shared by Filloux.

Though native apps (think iOS or Android app) lead as compared to mobile websites (think responsive design), Filloux notes that with games and Facebook apps accounting for 50% of the time spent on apps that result is skewed mightily.

News-related usage leans more to mobile websites as there is not yet the demand for complex rendering as is the case with a gaming, travel, or Facebook app.

News is also growing faster than gaming and social on mobile. Though only 5% of mobile users time is spent on news media today, the news segment is growing faster (64% year over year) than than messaging and social (+28%) or gaming and entertainment (+9% each).

Filloux expects that trend will only increase as publishers use their best efforts to adjust content and feature for mobile and as publishing competition on mobile increases.

In the case of consumers of legal news and consumers of legal services you can expect Facebook, gaming, and social to be dramatically less percentage wise than with the general population. Your audience’s time on mobile is likely to involve much heavier news and information consumption.

Add these facts to Gartner’s report this morning that more tablets will be sold than PCs in 2015, and you can see why your law firm needs to be designing and developing for mobile first, desktop second, for all of your blog publishing.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Michael Coughlan