Using Gestures to Tap into Mobile Monetization [infographic]
(see what i did there…? )
Mobile web browsing is different from desktop in many ways. One of those differences is due to the fact that modern devices have been designed around touch. The way we read, scroll and generally interact with the content we see on mobile browsers is fundamentally different and also presents interesting new opportunities for product designers, and in our case, monetization companies.
On our desktop and laptop devices we are used to pointing and clicking. The modern mouse is slightly more interesting these days (it can scroll, and a few more things! wow). But essentially, type a URL, click a link, scroll down, maybe even zoom. There’s some shortcuts we might use, maybe a few right clicks, hey, look! Some pop up window just launched. The way the browsers react to our actions is pretty stagnant over the past years too. It used to be a simple view port to the World Wide Web. Then it got a little more interesting. Extensions were a big thing a few years back. They enabled developers to start interacting with users themselves, not only through a web site. It got more personal with tools that began to look into the page but then went out of control with extensions that held users hostage, let’s not go there. But then things took a step backward, when browsers like chrome began to police their extensions (for reasons of abuse mainly). Mozilla nowadays has a block list of extensions you can negotiate your way into as a developer. Don’t.
But mobile browsing is different, and mobile browsers have developed a UX that can be called reactive, something that cannot be really said of desktop browsers. What do we mean by reactive? Reactive is when the browser senses what you’re doing and morphs into a new form. Mobile browsers know when to shift to landscape, when to open up to full screen, when to remove the address bar from view, or when to zoom into a text box, and pop up a keyboard. And they do this not because you ask them with a click, they do this because you gesture to them by way of a contextual action like a scroll down, a swipe, a double tap, or a tilt of your device. It’s obvious to us these days, but hidden here is a new opportunity to interact with the user.
Our code interacts with such features in mobile browsers. Having run this tool on over 9000 sites and millions of page views since we launched, it’s safe to say that for every page visited, there are an average of anywhere between 8–10 scroll actions performed by the user. In fact, there is an average of two long scrolls down and one scroll back up. These are all events that create a reation in the browser, which can be used to create engagement.
Here’s some of what we’ve learned over the past months, put into a neat little infographic on mobile web monetization and gestures.
