A once-a-year consumer satisfaction report has been recently released, which looks at all the digital platforms and entities, tracking who has the greatest satisfaction in the eyes of the public. The report covers all major platforms such as news sites, search engines, social media platforms and review sites. For this purpose, we will concentrate on search engine and social media results.
The way the survey is conducted, and the results displayed, aim to show the best platforms attracting and keeping more audience members. In addition, it measures whether those visitors are enjoying their use and time on the sites. The lower scores indicate unfavourable user interactions, with people spending less time on the platforms and the consequences this could have in revenue, traffic, and popularity for the owners.
The survey is conducted by picking a group of people at random. Their responses are then measured against the data that was obtained from the previous year, to spot trends on whether the platforms are holding steady, or declining / increasing in popularity.
Search engine results
Whether a search engine performed well in the test was down to factors such as the performance of the site, the speed and reliability of it, and the depth and scope of information it provides.
It is not surprising to learn that Google maintains the top spot – truly asserting its dominance you might conclude? However, the metrics have not changed from the previous year, so despite no fall, there has been no rise either!
What is interesting, is that it seems that Google’s lack of increase has come to benefit other search engines, including the likes of Yahoo and MSN which all experienced small rises. This may be one to watch for the future and appears to show that Google has work. It would seem that nothing can be taken for granted!
Social media results
The questions concerned factors relating to how easy the platform was to use, how reliable the platform was (especially on mobile devices,) the actual quality of the mobile app, privacy features, and adverts on the platform.
Pinterest came out on top, and have received a small gain from last year. Some of the biggest and well-known social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter fell in popularity, by 3% for the former and a massive 10% for the latter! Twitter has been focusing on changes to make its platform better, but these results would seem to indicate that it can’t come quick enough!
What does this tell us?
Many might regard Google as the first thing that comes to mind when search engines are mentioned, and Twitter / Facebook for social media. It is clear though that things seem to be changing, and this is evidence by the results that have been presented above. There are now many more search engines and social media platforms within the industry, and people are evidently not scared to try something else or be a part of something new. The big players can no longer guarantee that they will experience ‘forever after’ popularity, just because they are household and well recognised names or brands. Times are changing, technology moves on and so does peoples’ interactions with it.
If nothing else, these results prove that even the most well-known brands have a duty to move with the times too, or they could find themselves on the back foot at the very least, but completely irrelevant in the worst case!
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