MTV knows a thing or two about reaching, captivating and controlling the eyeballs of their audience. Their rein as the go-to source for pop culture information, as well as the inventors of Reality TV, has them ingrained within the TVs, desktops, mobile devices and now tablets of America’s youth—as well the young professional demographic that was the youth when MTV launched back in 1981.
MTV recently released a new video site custom designed for the iPad in order to cater specifically to the growing number of tablet users frequenting their domain. Now when you go to MTV.com, MTV.com/news or any of their other affiliate sites, they automatically recognize you as an iPad user and immediately display a pop up that states, “You’re on an iPad! Check out our new video site custom-made just for your iPad.” They then give you the ability to click to “take me there.”
Why would they want to segment out iPad users and drive them to a site specifically for that particular device? Without having access to the planning committee meetings where they put this initiative together, I can only take an educated guess as to the following: when they looked at their Web traffic stats, they realized that the overwhelming majority of iPad users were visiting their website in order to watch videos. Those iPad users were then sifting through videos the same way traditional desktop users were sifting through videos.
Instead of treating both users the same, they decided to cater to the iPad demographic and utilize the feature set that iPad users know and love, such as the ability to swipe through different home page options, scroll up and down using touch screen functionality to determine which videos they want to watch and provide full screen high definition videos which work well on the iPad. This keeps iPad users more engaged with the brand and on the site longer.
In real estate, your equivalent to the music video is a property search. If you look at your Web stats, how many users are visiting your site from an iPad? Of those iPad users, is the overwhelming majority immediately going to the property search function? If so, you should strongly consider optimizing your property search for iPad and tablet users.
Give them the experience they want such as touch screen functionality, swiping imagery, maps, overlays and most important of all GPS search; something your desktop site does not offer. If you cater to this user, not only will they stay on the site longer, but they will be more engaged with your brand and more likely to connect with you to assist them with their real estate search.
For more information about how to optimize your site for tablet users, email tabletidx@mobilecardcast.com.
