media update’s Adam Wakefield was at the YouTube MasterClass to hear about how brands can meet consumers' needs by being useful and faster.

Lorraine Landon, head of agencies at Google South Africa, took attendees through the first of four themes to be covered during the "User First Thinking" session.

"Everything around what Google is, is around user first thinking. We, in the advertising world, tend to think of Google in terms of platforms – Google Search, YouTube, those kinds of things. But it essentially boils down to the actual people who count, and those are the consumers," Landon said.

"Those are the people searching on a daily basis, who want to get from here to there. Where is the nearest? Those are the people that really count. This is who the product has been made for. When you search for something on Google, you are a consumer. You are expecting to get an answer to your question."

Consumers prefer to take the shorter route

Landon showed a picture of a path that was created by people taking a shortcut through a small lawn to avoid walking around a corner. This was an example, Landon said, of people taking the quickest, most useful route. The way the user reacts or is expected to react must be taken account.

"The question is, are we making people's lives easier? It always has to have the function of 'Is it answering that question? Is it making life easier? Are they going to be able to engage with the brand?'."

Examples of products that seemed to answer pertinent consumer questions, but failed to hit the mark, in reality, were the Segway and Google Glass. The Segway was meant to be the solution to city congestion, but it was too expensive, not prototyped or tested, no one was told about it prior to its unveiling, and took far too long and too far to turn.

The Google Glass, while future iterations of it will come to be, failed to ask was whether people would actually want to wear it.

The slower you help the customer, the faster you lose them

Consumer experiences take place one step at a time. Landon highlighted three mottos to do with consumers: "Help me faster", "Know me better", and "Wow me everywhere".

Helping users faster meant answering the consumer question more efficiently. A total of 53% of users abandon a mobile site if it takes longer than three seconds to load. Further, conversion drops 20% for every second of delay.

Knowing users better meant leveraging tools such as Google Analytics, push notifications, and touch ID. According to Landon, 89% of marketers reported that personalisation on their websites resulted in an uplift of revenue.

'Wowing' the consumer comes down to people, 62% in fact, expecting brands to deliver a consistent experience every time they interact with a brand. However, only 42% think most brands currently do.

Ultimately, as Landon said, "You are competing with the best experience a consumer has ever had."

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Just because Africa does not have as long a history in advertising as other markets, doesn't mean the work coming out of the continent is of a lesser standard. Read more in our article, Loeries® 2017: Africa is young, which means not boring.