Google has struck a video partnership with the inventor, influencer and stuntman Colin Furze that demonstrates the weird and wonderful world of search.
With Colin’s high-profile involvement, Google are promoting #startedwithsearch, encouraging everyone to share fascinating stories and experience that all started from a Google search.
Google and Colin Furze have released a video that shows the breadth of products you can find through search ads – resulting in the invention of a hot-tub-barbeque-garden extravaganza on wheels. Featuring in the video are brands, including Wickes and Argos, that use search ads to great effect and unwittingly contributed to Colin’s invention.
Google is encouraging businesses and individuals to share stories on how search has impacted them using the hashtag #startedwithsearch.
For businesses – how advertising on search has impacted their business success. For individuals – the weird, wonderful and absolutely essential things they have done after discovering a brand or product through search ads.
Matt Bush, director of agencies at Google UK, said: “Search has never been more integral in connecting businesses with consumers and helping them in their many needs and desires. We want to encourage brands to prioritise getting the basics right when it comes to search – such as optimising site load times on mobile – in order to fulfill their search expectations.
“Brands also need to consider how they can use search advertising creatively, connecting with customers in an engaging and exciting way that enables them to stand out among the great competition online. Ultimately, this will ensure that at the most crucial point of customer connection, brands will provide the best search ads experience possible”.
Consumers are becoming more demanding in their mobile use – a recent study of 100 top retail and finance mobile sites showed an average load time of around 5 seconds. Reducing that load time by just one second gave a massive 27% improvement rate in sales conversions and a 30% drop in bounce rates. It has never been more important to get the basics right when it comes to search and ensuring a good experience when consumers click from search to a mobile site.
Additional research by Google found over half (53%) of people visiting mobile sites will abandon a page that takes longer than three seconds to load. However, the average load time for mobile sites is 19 seconds over 3G connections. Clearly, this is an issue for many businesses and will damage overall business success if not addressed. Businesses can test their mobile site speed on g.co/testmysite.