How many adverts do you see around the web promoting custom Facebook page designs? Do any of these advertisers confess to you within their sales pitch that more than half of ‘active’ Facebook ‘users’ will never see your custom content?

As I wrote a few months ago, to an increasing extent custom tabs on Facebook business pages are a waste of money.

I’m not telling you this because I think it’s a scam, but simply to make you aware that most people will never see your custom Facebook page content. I don’t like seeing people are wasting money or being sold something that simply does not have the value the salesperson wants you to believe it has.

Facebook hits 488 million mobile users!

That is the headline I found in my inbox this morning. This is a seriously big number of people using the stripped down version of Facebook on a mobile phone or other handheld device. That is a seriously big number of people who see nothing more than the timeline, information tab and photos on business pages. It’s a seriously big number of people who, by using the mobile version of Facebook, or an app to access Facebook, will never see any of the custom content you might have paid to have designed for your Facebook page.

This is why I stopped promoting Facebook page designs back in December of last year.

Here’s a couple of screenshots showing the difference between the desktop version of a Facebook business page and what a mobile user will actually see. As you can see, Coca-Cola have invested in custom content that can only be seen by less than half of the reported number of ‘active’ Facebook users.

Here’s what you would see through your desktop browser; notice the ‘Home’ and ‘Move to the Beat’ custom tabs?

Here’s what you would see if you visit Coca-Cola’s Facebook page on your mobile; notice the ‘Home’ and ‘Move to the Beat’ custom tabs are NOT available?

Not everybody uses Facebook and not everybody who uses Facebook is interested in finding business pages and not everybody who actually sees your business page will actually see their custom content that you spent your time and money to have created.

Over 50% of Facebook users viewing Facebook via mobile devices is something we should all be aware of and it is time all businesses, large and small, realise it is not the custom content that is going to create engagement but it is the conversations that we initiate or participate in within the timeline that matters.

Fan gating, reveal tabs (like to see) and all that kind of crazy and somewhat annoying activity, considering that most people will never see the custom content, is, in large part, a waste of money and a complete waste of effort.

In some countries 70 to 80% of Facebook users use a mobile device!

These are not numbers we should ignore. These are numbers we have to pay attention to.

• In the United States over 100 million Facebook users are using mobiles (including other handheld devices like iPad except).
• Canada has over 10 million Facebook users who prefer to use a mobile device.
• In the UK more than 20 million people are using Facebook from their phone or tablet computer.

These numbers are replicated worldwide. And, let’s not forget the massive number of people who ‘use’ Facebook through non-Facebook apps like HootSuite, TweetDeck, iSocialize, (and many others). Take all these ‘users’ out of the equation and you can see your investment in custom tabs, fan-gating and reveal tabs (like to see) is reaching far fewer ‘users’ than you had hoped.

Don’t Waste Money on Facebook Tabs

What I would recommend to you, if you want to have a mini website inside your Facebook page, is to not invest in a brand-new site just for Facebook but to invest in a fully responsive website that automatically adapts the layout and size to desktop browsers, small screens on mobile devices and the 810 pixel width of a custom Facebook tab area.

As long as you have a little bit of Facebook code inside your responsive website it will work within Facebook just as well as it will work on all other devices and you won’t have had to spend (waste) more money than you should be spending.