My Mobile Story: How shockingly surprising it was!

"Did you know that an average person spends about three and a half hours in a day on their phone?” 

When I read this, I was startled and exclaimed how people can spend so much time on their phones. However, when I checked my screen time, my phone gave me a reality check and had a different story to tell. As per my phone - Samsung Note 10+, I spent an average of 6 hours and 30 minutes on it daily with the usage spent majorly across these 5 apps (of the 97 apps installed on my phone). 

Well, can you blame someone for spending that much amount of time on their mobile when there are so many new, cool and interactive apps that cling on to you? Almost everything can be done from this little device that resides on your palm. Apart from talking and texting which is old school, these latest phones have the ability to work as your personal assistants. Siri and Bixby are no less in making us dependent on them for the smallest of things. Having said all that with a reality check of my screen time, I thought maybe I should take a deeper look into the reasons why I devote so much time to my phone. So, here’s what my typical day looks like:

I usually wake up to the first feature in my phone called the “Alarm” and snoozing it multiple times before getting up from the bed. For some reason despite setting at least 5 alarms with a time difference of 10 mins, I somehow always end up getting late (I need to fix this!). After getting up, the first application that I use is WhatsApp as there are a lot of messages that come in during the nighttime from my family and friends back home (in India). I usually spend my mornings replying to those messages and talking to my family while having my masala chai. WhatsApp is the application that I spend my majority time on!

After this, the next application that takes a major chunk of my time is Instagram. I usually end up spending hours just scrolling through feeds and looking at products that are advertised by the brands that I follow (and a lot of time purchasing them too). I really love the shopping feature which takes you directly to the brand website to make the purchase, thereby making the buyer journey very smooth and not giving time for buyers to rethink their purchase decision. I believe while scrolling through Instagram, I undergo a micro-moment of “I-want-to-buy” and cannot help but cave in to it. Instagram has a page called “Kobe Eats” which shows homemade recipes and their chef is the cutest. Watching that makes me go through another micro-moment of “I-want-to-do” and follow the steps of making that dish and trying that for either lunch or dinner (I ain’t a good cook).

The third application extensively used and which I also call my best friend is “Google” Chrome. This is my go-to place for all the questions, doubts, information, facts, and whatnot. It helps me out with everything and thereby leading to another micro-moment of “I want-to-know” and finding the answer to that. Today I searched for what is the average time spent by a person in a day on their phone. The term micro-moment was introduced to us last semester and then also, my best friend was there to help me out. Micro-moments occur when people reflexively turn to their smartphone, to act on a need to:

• learn something (I-want-to-know),
• do something (I-want-to-do),
• discover something (I-want-to-go),
• watch something (I-want-to-watch), or
• buy something (I-want-to-buy). 

The next application that I use every day is YouTube. This is another application that helps me in fulfilling a lot of my micro-moments like I-want-to-watch the latest highlights of a soccer game or I-want-to-learn how to do the Floss Dance or the Shoot Dance.

Source: Business Insider

The last application that is also a very important part of my life is Spotify. This is my partner on my evening walks, and it allows you to create custom playlists as well as pre-loaded playlists depending on your mood. My current favorite playlist is the winter playlist that has a combination of both slow and fast-beat songs.

Having talked about how micro-moments affect our everyday lives, let us talk about how the marketing perspective comes in. Marketers are aware of the apps that the consumers are using and how traffic is flowing into their websites through them and they try to make the transition seamless. However sometimes instead of having a great experience, it results in a negative experience. It can be due to any reason, for e.g. while searching for videos on YouTube, if I am shown ads multiple times in a video, it would ruin my experience of watching the video as well as make me develop a negative experience towards the brand as it is coming in the way of my entertainment. Another example can be that when I click on the link of the brand page on Instagram and it takes time to load, I might change my decision of purchasing during that time.

Just like me, there are so many other consumers who go through such micro-moments every day and by making sure that they understand these micro-moments, marketers can create an experience that would redefine the consumer journey and build a positive relationship between the brand and the consumer.

Everyone interacts with brands on their phone through different applications for entertainment, knowledge, learning, and even gaming. This shows that everyone has a different journey and marketers need to have a different approach for every such interaction. Reflecting on my mobile day has helped me in understanding the way different apps meet my micro-moment requirements and how can marketers ensure that people have a positive experience. Understanding and reacting to your consumers' micro-moment will always set you apart from the competition.