Many years ago a very famous book was published here in Australia ... well it was very famous here in Australia but I doubt that it ever made the best-seller lists in any other country.

It was written at a time when a lot of immigrants were coming to Australia from Italy and it was supposedly written by one of those Italian immigrants. The title of the book was "They're a Weird Mob" and it took a very light-hearted look at your average Australian and their view of the world and how different it was to everyone else.

Up until that point I think most Australians thought that they were just like everyone else but back then we were very different to the people in other countries and coming to Australia was quite a culture shock for people from just about everywhere.

Back then we expected everyone to be just like us and we treated people from other countries as if they came from a place where things were done just as they are here. If something worked for us then it must have worked for people from other places.

Of course it didn't and over time Australians have become more cosmopolitan ... more accepting that other people are different and not everyone responds in exactly the same way. Sometimes I think that change in the way we view others is a good thing but at other times it's not so good ... because, if there was real discrimination in those days then it wasn't as nasty as it is today.

But just because you may not be an Australian from the 1960s ... just because you come from a country that may be more accepting of others ... you shouldn't feel smug because it's quite possible that in many ways you're just like my parents were.

They saw people from other countries though their own life experiences ... these days many of us see the people we want to sell to through the filters of our life experiences.

We use the Net in a set way and so we expect everyone else to use it in exactly the same way. We surf the Net using a PC or a laptop and so we expect everyone else to be doing the same. While we stick to our view of the world the world is getting on with life and moving on from where we are.

So with that in mind let me ask you to stop for a moment and think about how the people you're trying to market to are really accessing the Net. Think about it ... are they using the same devices you're using or are they viewing the Net in different ways?

Of course, unless you've been living in a cave for the last couple of years you will know that more and more people are accessing the Net through mobile devices and we should be catering for those new devices but is that enough?

Could it be that the Net surfing habits of the people who are using mobile devices is changing too?

At a conference in New York last week some interesting figures were shared by the Weather Channel and it shows that as mobile devices are becoming more sophisticated people's surfing habits are changing even more.

Back in 2000s the Weather Channel had an application available for people who wanted to add it to their high-end mobile phones and quite a few people downloaded the app. However the Weather Channel found that on average those people only used the application to access the weather 11 times a month.

That figure was about on a par with the number of times people used their PCs to access the Weather Channel but when the iPhone came along things changed ... a lot. When the Weather Channel's iPhone app was released the number of times an iPhone user would access weather information rose from those early 11 times a month to an amazing 33 times a month.

The average iPhone user was looking at the weather more than once a day and that iPhone app now generates more that 5.6 million uniques a month and "tens of millions in revenue".

But don't think that iPad users and iPhone users are the same because ... according to the Weather Channel's statistics ... they're not. The spread of iPhone user's access to the Weather Channel is spread across all seven days of the week but iPad users tend to access the Weather Channel more on weekends than on weekdays. In fact the Weather Channel sees three to four times more iPad access on weekends than it does during the week.

Figures like this aren't just unique to the Weather Channel ... some magazines with print and online versions are seeing interesting numbers too. For example Conde Nast's GQ magazine has found that people who access their normal website spend about 10 minutes a month looking at the magazine. People who access the iPhone version of the website spend 65 to 70 minutes a month looking at the magazine.

So what are your users doing ... have you even thought of offering them something that they can view on their high-end phones or are you still thinking that accessing the Web on mobile devices is just a passing fad?

The quicker you begin to understand your users and cater for the way they're interacting with the Net the more chance you have of continuing to make money. If you don't take time to understand your users they're going to move on and leave you and your business to wither and die.

09/03/2010 - Where is Your Head Right Now Part 2?

09/01/2010 - Where is Your Head Right Now?

08/27/2010 - The Need to Think Things Through

08/13/2010 - Some Helpful Links

08/06/2010 - This and That on a Crazy Friday

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