Our diminishing attention span poses trouble for mobile marketers

In this age of aplenty, we are spoilt for choices. And that, according to a report conducted by Jampp, is eroding our attention span by a dramatic 88 percent year over year, especially in the way we use apps and smartphones.

The app install and re-targeting platform aggregated 10 billion data points from thousands of Android and iOS apps, as well as data provided by Adjust, Apsalar, and Localytics, in order to understand how we install apps when we first make a purchase, and how much time we spend in-app.

The data revealed as much as a 35 percent decrease in average app session length quarter over quarter. Seventy percent of conversions for e-commerce apps occur within the first 14 days after install, but it largely depends on the industry the app represents, such as fashion, cab aggregators etc.

The report states that taxi apps have the shortest latency period of 4 days to drive 80 percent of conversions, whereas fashion apps have the longest latency period: 31 days to drive 90 percent of conversions. This revelation leaves the job for mobile marketers perfectly cut out. It means mobile marketers would need to change how they approach mobile app users.

But the shorter attention span of consumers makes the task of startups become tougher. With established players like Amazon—who already has control of almost 50 percent of first-time product searches—dominating the space, the new e-commerce players would need to be shrewd in the face of it.

“The app market for e-commerce isn’t so clear cut. Purchases, users, and mobile usage are on the rise based on some data we’ve seen. However, to capture interest and a user’s attention, we’re seeing that decline as people are generally more distracted by external factors when using their mobile devices,” Diego Meller, co-founder of Jampp said.

The even more worrying finding of the report is those push notifications and email remarketing—two ways to drive re-engagement in mobile apps—are not performing well. Only 46 percent of users find these tactics to be helpful, with 52 percent stating that they are an annoying distraction.