Top trends for e-content in India in 2014

Internet landscape in India is transforming very fast thanks to mobile penetration. The latest IAMAI report says India has 200 million internet users. As of June 2013, India had 873.36 million mobile subscribers of which 176.5 million users accessed internet through their mobile device. Every month India adds three million mobile internet users.

The media in India is focusing a lot on e-commerce portals for the past few years but there is a considerable amount of activity in the content space too.

Content portals are not limited to news and entertainment alone. That was true a decade ago but now there are several speciality portals, or verticals, in content space – lifestyle, automobile, education, sports, health. Comscore reports repeatedly demonstrate that the consumption of content portals is on the rise. This is expected because internet now is used by all sections of the society – students, professionals, retired people and women.

But there is a huge misconception even today that internet is largely for English speaking people. We at Oneindia have been investing in the language space for over a decade now. Language portals did not take off for a long time because internet penetration was limited to Tier-1 cities. Today, with mobile internet being available at affordable prices, we see a huge surge in consumption of various online services, leading to a number of trends as described below.

1. Infographics

The attention span of readers is shrinking by the day. Alerts from Facebook, Twitter, SMS, and phone calls all interrupt you while reading long-form content. Users want to get the same amount of information but not necessarily in text form – especially as an infographic.

Creating good infographics can be expensive as you need resources with various skills. A designer cannot create a good infographic unless an analytics person presents the information.

2. Content for mobile

Earlier we created content for the desktop user. Mobile data in India became popular by way of SMS; many SMS companies grew aggressively but they died because of the government regulations (SMS limit and DND list).

According to the latest reports, the mobile internet user base is bigger than the desktop internet user base in India. The presentation of content has to be different for a mobile and tablet device. Are publishers geared up for that?

3. WhatsApp replaces SMS

We love anything that is “free”. WhatsApp was the perfect product we were looking for. BBM from BlackBerry offered a similar functionality but limited the circle to BlackBerry users. The cross platform availability of WhatsApp is very attractive. Major political parties are using WhatsApp for interacting with their volunteers. Content publishers should look at generating content to share on WhatsApp with the hope it would get viral.

4. Responsive design

Responsive design (RD) is one of the best ways to render the same content differently depending upon the type of device. While RD is not difficult for simple sites it can get tricky while implementing for complex sites. The best way to tackle RD is by coming to terms with what will be displayed for desktop user vs. a mobile user. It is not necessary to display every pixel of your busy homepage for a mobile user; instead render a simpler version of your homepage for a mobile device while still maintaining the same URL.

5. Content for social media

Content publishers will have to pay a lot of attention to social media users. Facebook penetration in India is very high and the digital marketing team has already started treating it as an important referral source, may be even more than Google. This means you will need to have a dedicated social media team, just as you have SEO team.

6. Local language

The mobile internet penetration is increasing in non-urban areas. These consumers will want to read content in their local language. In fact, many e-commerce services will need to have a language version to serve this big user base. Local content in local languages on the mobile will be a truly amazing combination.

7. Elections and social media

I have written on my blog about the effect of social media in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. The election fever can already be felt on social media. Political parties and politicians will be using social media mainly as a two-way communication tool. They will keep a tab on the voter pulse through this medium. The advantage of social media is that politician can see the reactions first hand and in real time.

8. Video

The user base for online videos is very large because literacy doesn’t play a factor here. According to Google, almost one-third of the YouTube viewers in India access videos on their mobiles and spend over 48 hours a month on the website. The popularity of online videos among all age groups is immense. Earlier, YouTube was the primary platform to watch videos; today Facebook and Google+ have considerable amount of video content. Video has always been popular it will only get more popular in 2014.

Overall 2014 will be an exciting year for content players in India because of the growth of mobile internet, upcoming elections and increase in use of social networks like Facebook. Content publishers have a lot of work to do in 2014!

Image credits: careanyware.com