Optimised Mobile Website – Why You Need One Now!

At the beginning of the year, we looked at a range of our customers stats and noticed something interesting. Straight after Christmas, mobile traffic to websites increased massively. In some cases, the mobile traffic for January 2011 alone eclipsed the total mobile traffic for the whole 4th quarter of 2010!

The main reason for such a spike was likely the heavy distribution of high end mobile devices on Christmas day. How many of your received a nice new iPad, iPhone or Smartphone for Christmas? ;)

We were curious though; would this spike continue throughout 2011 and become a trend? Well, let’s find out...

Mobile Traffic 2010 vs. 2011

We sampled some of our top customers covering a range of different industries, site types (including those with mobile optimised sites and those without) and traffic sizes. Immediately, we could see that mobile traffic has increased massively when compared to 2010. Out of the total data gathered, we saw:

2010: 32,025 mobile visits
2011: 78,661 mobile visits

This is an increase of 146%! We’ve still got one month left to go in 2011 too, so this will only climb higher! In the graph below, you can clearly see the growth of mobile traffic over the course of the year:

Optimised Mobile Website – Why You Need One Now!

In 2010 the graph shows that our surveyed sites saw a continuous growth in mobile traffic for most of the year. 2010 then finishes with a peak in December that continues into 2011. The start of 2011 is a little wobbly, but this is down to some of the sites seeing exponential spikes on some months (like May) but then returning to normal growth levels.

With this in mind, it’s definitely time to ensure that your site is providing the absolute best user experience for mobile visitors. The scope for a mobile device to reach your site is absolutely huge now, so it’s crucial to get rid of those flash intro pages!

What Else Did We Notice?

We also picked up some other interesting bits from our data analysis that wouldn’t immediately be obvious. Some of the key points we got from this included:

Smaller traffic sites were seeing larger relative increases in mobile traffic compared to more established sites.
Sites with mobile optimised versions were seeing more participation with more conversions, page views, time spent on the site and less bounces.
Adwords is sending more and more mobile visits, with the lowest increase from 2010 to 2011 being 80% in our sample!
eCommerce sites were seeing exceptional growth in mobile traffic, especially those who are highly active in social media.

What Does this Mean?

It's pretty obvious that mobile traffic is growing and you can expect more visits to your site from this source. As more of these devices become available alongside faster data plans, more people will be doing their internet browsing through a mobile device. Therefore, as a larger slice of your site visitors enters through such a device; it becomes critical to ensure they are presented with the best user experience possible.

While most devices can render full websites, in most cases they are no where near as usable as a dedicated, mobile optimised version. This is true if you use a lot of Javascript on your site, especially if it’s for navigation.

This trend is set to continue well into 2012. We’re positive that in January we will see another big spike of mobile traffic (we’ll report back with a new blog post!) so we’re busy preparing for this. It's important that you are too. Do you know how many people go to your site on a mobile device?

Optimise Your Site for Mobile Now!

The time is now to get your website ready for more mobile visits. It's not just for huge companies and large eCommerce sites anymore; smaller sites also need to ensure they are optimised for mobile. Contact us on 0800 081 1688 today and we’ll create a thorough mobile usability report to get your mobile strategy up to date and working for you.

Posted by: Spiderscope on November 29^th, 2011 @ 12:22 AM
Tagged with: iPhone site, Mobile Website, Optimisation

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