How Many of Your Visitors Use Mobile?

In previous blog posts I have written about the increasing use of mobile devices to view web pages.  Since the month is ending I wanted to get the facts about my client’s mobile visitors, and to do this I visited my current Google Analytics clients, which currently numbers 20.  I looked at each account for the last month (from June 30, 2012 – July 30, 2012), and I noted the number of regular visitors vs. mobile visitors.

The Mobile Results:
A few clients were in the 5% range
The majority of clients were in the 10% range
A few clients were in the 25% range or higher

* Every Analytics account had some mobile visitors

All total there were 8041 visits in the month, with 1133 being from mobile devices.  The client sites “averaged” approx. 400 visitors per month with 57 of them using a mobile device of some type, which in most cases would be either the Android Feature Phone or Smart Phone in portrait view.  This provides a mean of approx. 14% for mobile.  Of course as I noted some clients had a very high percentage of mobile which I wanted to examine so as to better understand.

For Example:
– Kauai Camper Rentals had approx. 20% mobile visitors.
– Gilchrist Golf Cars and the Highway 50 Association had approx 25% mobile visitors.
– Pietro’s No.2 (our newest client) had nearly 90% using mobile (wow!).

I guess the question is, why is one site getting many more mobile visitors than another?  My feeling is that the answer lies with the type of business.

• Kauai Campers has an active Facebook page and provides resources to those visiting the Island of Kauai. It is likely that people visit the site when they are thinking of traveling, which is recreational.
• Gilchrist Golf Cars has lots of pictures and information about Golf Cars, and since this is generally a recreational purchase I think most would view the site as fun.
• The Highway 50 Association is an organization for the horse and wagon enthusiast and features their yearly “Wagon Train” trek.  Again, a site that is more fun than business.
• Pietro’s is a restaurant, and as you know, when you are thinking of something to do you are likely to bring out your smart phone and see what restaurants and other potential entertainment venues are available.

Well, the evidence is pretty hard to dispute.  Yes, the mobile website is now a necessity, and will only become more so.  If you are one of my Analytics clients be sure to contact me and I will email you your website’s mobile data so you can make your own assessment about whether a mobile site is needed yet for your business or not?

If you are curious about our Mobile Website development – following are the basics:

I use the latest  jQuery Mobile framework which allows me to create ADA compliant touch-enabled websites that will render quickly and effectively in all mobile devices. This Mobile development platform uses HTML5 and jQuery Mobile technology which works across all popular mobile device platforms and includes an Ajax navigation system that provides animated page transitions, and popular UI widgets such as toolbars, listviews, buttons with icons, form elements, accordions, collapsibles, and more.  Maybe most importantly, jQuery Mobile is designed to work with all mobile browsers (which responsive designs, and other mobile technologies don’t universally achieve).

To ensure that the content can be viewed by everyone I size images to work in the Android Feature Phone in portrait view (currently the most common mobile platform is use).  In this regard images are defined to work within the 240×320 window dimension by setting a max-width:100%, or in case of slideshows where a max-width won’t work, I will size it at approx. 220px in width.  Of course there is also the popular Smart Phone which has a viewing screen of 320×480, so my goal is to find a good balance between these two width dimensions when creating a Mobile website.  All the Mobile sites I create utilize an htaccess file that will automatically redirect a visitor on a mobile phone to the mobile-only version, yet I provide the option to return to the main website if they wish by a link.

For existing clients I will provide a new “Mobile Only” website at a discount cost (contact me so we can discuss specifics).  The Mobile site will be created to convey a similar look/feel as your existing website, and to provide all of the key services and primary website information; this would include a home page with an overview of the company, logo inclusion, contact page with contact form, services page, about page, social media integration, enough images to provide visual interest, etc.  If you haven’t yet viewed our latest mobile websites I’ve included some representative samples below.  And of course please contact me if you have questions.