Up and to the Right
The mobile internet is here to stay. We cannot fight it or avoid it and to be honest, why would you want to? Mobile technology allows us to connect to the internet almost anywhere at any time and with 4G connections we can now access the internet even quicker than with a fixed broadband line.
Adam Maidment, Head of Digital at LAW Creative, takes a quick look at LAW’s own mobile usage statistics for 2013 and briefly discusses the trends currently taking place within the industry.
“Over the last 18 months we’ve seen a very steady but solid growth in mobile usage across our entire portfolio of websites. We collated the results from our top 10 performing websites and analysed the mobile device usage to see what had been happening within our own client base. The results reflect what we’re seeing across the industry in the UK and globally; that is, positive growth.”
The above graph depicts the average mobile usage each month for 2013. The range is 25.08% in January 2013 to 35.05% in December 2013. August achieved the highest results with a mobile device usage of 37.47%.
“Across our top 10 we saw a steady average increase of 0.83% per month. Our analysis included websites which were aimed at either a leisure market or corporate market. Interestingly when we separated these results we can see that the leisure market is much more likely to access websites via a mobile device than the corporate markets. The obvious assumption being that the ‘leisure’ websites are visited more by consumers on the move or by those using a smaller device whilst relaxing at home, for instance.”
The above graph depicts the average mobile usage each month for 2013 for ‘leisure’ websites and ‘corporate’ websites.
The range for ‘corporate’ websites is 14.65% in January 2013 to 22.98% in December 2013 with a peak in August of 32.57%. This peak as attributed to a successful AdWords PPC campaign run on our own website (www.lawcreative.co.uk) in that period – a more even curve is observed if this anomalous result is removed.
The range for ‘leisure’ websites is 31.34% in January 2013 to 44.71% in December 2013, with a peak in the final month.
“It’s been great to watch the stats month by month, particularly the ‘leisure’ market websites as the mobile usage growth is staggering. An average increase of 1.11% per month in 2013 is fantastic and we’re seeing this growth continue right into 2014. Some of our portfolio is even experiencing rates upwards of 70% mobile usage, while others have rates consistently over 50% for the last 6 months.”
So how does this impact website design agencies and what should we be doing to stay alive in this ever changing mobile landscape?
“Well, there’s no denying it. We have to commission websites which provide an excellent experience for mobile users by adopting techniques additional to the standard fixed-site approach. Website designers absolutely have to adopt a multi-resolution mind-set, otherwise visitors will visit your site, receive a sub-par experience and leave. It is more work both for the graphic designers and website developers, but the end results and increased ROI balance the initial investment in the long term.
Global stats are on a steady growth pattern, but seeing this ‘up and to the right’ trend really brings it home and shows how popular the mobile internet is. In fact over the last 18 months, except for some single page microsites, every website we have built at LAW Creative has adopted mobile responsive layouts and technologies.
Of course you can’t just take someone else’s stats as gospel, you still need to do the proper research and analysis on behalf of your client; target audience, current statistical trends, UX analysis, IA etc. but even if the current market is only say 10-15%, that could potentially be a huge number of visitors receiving a bad experience, which can only reflect badly on the company or brand.”
Does all this apply to email as well?
“Absolutely. In fact, we ran an internal ‘Email Master Class’ here at LAW Creative a couple of weeks ago and looking at the stats for email usage, the situation is no different there – again, ‘up and to the right’. Mobile responsiveness is a different ball-game for email, as the technology and build practices are far more restrictive, but there are some great techniques and tricks to produce beautiful mobile email campaigns that are compatible on virtually all devices, resolutions and email clients. We send out millions of email campaigns a month on behalf of our clients and, like our websites, these are all mobile responsive by default now.”
If you’d like to speak to Adam or any of our team about mobile website design, email marketing, or any of our digital services feel free to get in touch via our Contact page.