“If you want to see the future, look at the Millennial. They are the first truly digitally native generation. They grew up online. The Internet is the real world,” Anthony Citrano, vice president for communications at Verizon Digital Media Services most recently said at a conference with Refinery29.

With the help of Verizon, Refinery29 is giving its mobile platform a total makeover as to make it more user friendly and in the end…millenial consumer friendly. Jake McGraw, director of technical operations, says that 94 percent of its users use a smartphone and 8 out of ten “experiment with technology.” They noted that before Refinery29 was just taking the same layout they had for their website and reformatting it for mobile, but for mobile consumers the interaction must be a much  quicker instant gratification, while laptop users may have Refinery29 open and scroll through over time at home or at the office. With mobile devices you have “seconds to engage the user.” This means that the content must be delivered at the fastest rate possible, which is where Verizon Edgecast steps in.  Verizon’s content delivery network can decifer between whether or not a user is mobile or on a laptop and then speed up the content as it sees fit.

Citrano said Verizon polled these tech savvy millenials and gathered data on them, specifically on what kind of devices they used and how they used them online. “They control more than $1.5 trillion in consumer spending, and are now entering their prime earning years….They are serious multitaskers, who are highly visual. They expect [sites] to load instantly. They live in HD [high definition video], and 41 percent will leave a site if it doesn’t load in two seconds,” and companies “have to build for mobile or they are missing out. If your website sucks, you suck. They’ll go elsewhere. They take it personally.”

Well there you have it. Companies not only have to think more omnichannel, but  also about speed, content and efficiency. With the addition of millenial consumers, the retail world is evolving everyday.

http://www.wwd.com/business-news/technology/refinery29-revamps-mobile-platform-7970861?module=business-news-technology-page-1