Have you heard of Sabermetrics? It is the scientific analysis of baseball and the performance of its players based on statistics. The movie Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman uses precisely as the central theme the application of Sabermetrics by Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics for hiring players.
Similarly, we can apply statistics to online business development scientifically, starting with the internet users statistics which tell us about the significant trends in the use of the network in the world. It is not about massively collecting useless or hard to handle data. It is about knowing some critical data about the current behavior of the internet and its users. How they have changed over time and the causes of such changes.
This is one of the strategies to get to know the specific audience in our niche better and to adapt our content, messages, proposals, and offers to it. As well as adjust how we promote our business in search engines and social media.
Internet Evolution
It is not the purpose of this entry to describe the history and technical details of the Internet about which there is a great deal of information both online and offline. However, it is relevant to point out that the Internet emerged as a limited computer interconnection project in the 60s. Its central purpose was information exchange between universities. But become the “information Superhighway” that we know today and to which is connected 57.3% of the world population.
The famous ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) connected via a telephone line to the Universities of Californa and Stanford back in 1969. It was transformed over time to interconnect networks around the world to share information through protocols and specially created languages such as TCP/IP and HTML.
Afterward, services were added that work through the network to handle hypertext files (WWW, world wide web), email (SMTP), instant messaging, telephony (VoIP), television (IPTV), etc., which diversified the communication in a growing spectrum.
The development of technology for connectivity and internet access such as broadband and Wi-Fi to name a few; and electronic devices (laptops, smartphones, tablets, etc.), changed the speed and mobility of connection to a virtual world. That became part of the daily life of all people.
How many people connected?
By June 2019 as recorded in Internet World Stats, the world population was 7,716,223,209 people. 53.7% of that population, that is, 4,422,494,622, was connected to the Internet. This means that 5 out of 10 people on planet Earth have access to this global communication network either by public or private means, by payment or free of charge.
The most connected regions are Europe and North America, with percentages around 80% of the respective populations. But surprisingly, the increase in Internet use from 2000 to 2019 in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America and the Caribbean has been exponential. Half of the users connected to the Internet are in the Asian region.
These general data already allow us to begin to visualize a map of the world about the use of the Internet and the possible implications that this has on the world of online business.
Your business and the world map
If your business is exposed online, it will tend to be projected to various regions and population groups. Demographic characteristics such as language, ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic status, age, gender, marital status, and many others tend to be shared among people from different parts of the planet.
Sometimes only one of these characteristics is required for a person to feel part of an identity. The taste for a specific food, a literary or cinematographic theme, a scientific question, a fashion trend, a fantasy character, a musical style, etc., create bonds of belonging towards a particular topic.
Understanding the characteristics of a particular topic and how people think about it, is key to defining a niche market, no matter the issue in question. Once that niche is determined, a target population is also limited. Regardless of the region of the world in which they are located.
How does your target population differ from the rest of the world’s population?
What are they searching for on the Internet?
Why are they interested in some particular issues that others don’t?
Who is browsing at this time?
You do not need to have a drone to spy on each and every person to know how they behave when surfing the internet. There are also statistics for this, and you can also use them in your favor.
What is the operating system that people use to connect? Android or Windows Is there a difference in the use of iOS or OSX
Are you interested in knowing which browser you use most? Or maybe if it is true that Google is the search engine used massively?
Do people connect only to look for something or also to socialize? In this case, what social media do you use most among Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram?
Each of these data and many more that you can explore in Statcounter, show us different types of thinking and behavior. That help to specify how it is that people access the content on the network, which helps you design strategies to find them where they are going.
Electronic devices, the windows of the world
But it’s not only essential to know how people get to the virtual world where you put your content to be found. It also matter the vehicles they use to arrive. Those vehicles are electronic devices. They have been thought of as the windows of the world because they allow you to see people, places, and things that are physically in a different place than what you are now. But at the same time, they are space-time doorways that allow you to penetrate a virtual world such as videogames, movies, virtual reality, etc.
The size of ‘portals’ (desktop computer, smartphone, tablet or laptop), their speed to navigate, as well as the quality of the images is critical to determine how long people stay in the online world. In parallel, their ability to connect wirelessly anywhere determines the user’s movement in the offline world. We both care as online business owners.
The better the text and image quality on the screen or sound and movements of a video, the higher the likelihood of a people staying longer on a web page. These probabilities increase when the speed of navigation facilitates scrolling up or down on a page. There is nothing as annoying as moving between pages that take a long time to load. For that reason, a site with enough speed to make these changes will have an advantage over others.
But perhaps the most critical feature in our time is that of physical mobility. If a page can only look good on the desktop computer but not on a smartphone, that means there will be a limitation of such mobility. This is a feature that harms the performance of a website.
And yes, there are also specific statistics to know the percentage of use of each type of electronic device, and what it implies in terms of mobility among other indicators. Google Analytics, for example, offers reports on how long a person stays on each page of a website, how many pages he visits, how many times he returns to the site, etc.
Different people, different searches
As we have said, diverse people can share joint interests as well as the use of similar channels to reach the internet. However, their way of searching may be the determining factor that connects them with a source of information or others.
What keywords do people use to find something that interests them? Some words are more logical and common than others and therefore are more used. Google, which is the hegemonic search engine, has designed various tools to help people with this. The Alphabet Soup Technique is an example. However, there is still the freedom to use our own peculiar words for our searches.
How easy it is for someone to find your website with each of the different keywords they can use?
What keywords are being used in the world for a specific topic?
Do regional differences or trends matter?
What tools can you use for this?
In a general approach, Google Trends allows you to explore the search frequencies of a specific term and display them graphically by period and region. There are several tools, such as Google Keyword Planner, Jaaxy, Soovle, and several others for a more accurate search. These tools bring data as the number of times a keyword is searched per month; the traffic this word generates to a website as well as more sophisticated markers such as the competition of such keyword.
In summary, the use of statistics provide more valuable information, make decisions with a scientific basis, and correct the direction of a process. This is valid in an online business. However, we must always keep in mind that the content must not lose sight of the human factor that is the lament that ultimately generates trust.
Maybe it’s a good idea to start learning how Google Analytics works to implement it in our business.
If you are interested in developing a reliable business based on trustworthy information but focused on offering real and honest solutions to people, CLICK HERE
I never knew you could use statistics to improve your business. I just learned something new today. I’m always keyword searching to increase my ranking on Google, but I think I will try Jaaxy. Thanks for the direction of how to use increase my exposure in very dense online world.
Right from time, the use of statistics has been a great deal and its really helpful in the running so many things like its application to the development online business scientifically. Internet user statistics helps us fish out the new trends and vogues in the use of the network in the world. Internet connection has become part of human life daily and its through this the world stay connected. As shown by the statistics in this educating post, 53% of the total world population was connected to the Internet and this has definitely helped online business to spread their to different regions of the world in a snap. This is a very interesting post, its really helpful and it’ll be useful to others too. Thanks for sharing.
Hello, I must compliment you on such an informative article. You even provided a video! It’s like you actually want us to learn something! Personally, I have gone with Bing’s webmaster tools. Analytics is a lot to peruse. When I first learned of them, I thought I would study them regularly. But after setting it all up, I never used it! How foolish of me. You have reminded me of their value. I realize now that I need to pay closer attention if I want my website to succeed in catching the attention of people interested in my field. I’m so glad I found your site. I’ll be back to check on other hints I need. Thank you so much for sharing!