During the last few years, we have seen a steady trend of mobile traffic taking a bigger piece of the pie. Some are even speculating that mobile web traffic will one day overtake regular PC traffic. But is it really the case? There are some stats that were released by Shareaholic in October that are based on data from the network’s publishers. While it doesn’t give a completely global view of the situation, as Shareaholic is a large network, it does give a good idea of the type of traffic in the online world right now.
According to traffic going from publishers to various merchants, 16% of users are on mobile devices and 84% of users are on PCs. Another similar compilation of stats was released by Web Meters, which included information from page counter applications such as StatCounter. According to the data, 11% of all web traffic in the United States is coming from mobile users, as opposed to 89% being generated from regular PCs. This has remained rather stable from 2011 to this year, which means that mobile traffic still has a long way to go before it dethrones the PC completely.
But there’s another interesting statistic regarding web usage. Site abandonment, or bounce rates, are higher on mobile traffic than for PCs. They hover around 10% according to a few different sources on the web. There are a few reasons behind this and what you can do to prevent site abandonment:
Sites not built for mobiles. If a user sees that the website can’t display properly, they will simply leave and visit one that does. Hence the importance of building a mobile version of your site and testing it with several different mobile browsers to see if it works well. The testing should be comprehensive and done on all pages of your site, ensuring that design elements are well displayed on the smaller screen and that the text remains easily readable.
Information not quickly available. Mobile sites should be direct and to the point. Many mobile users want to find something in a hurry. They don’t have the time and patience to go through 50 different pages on a site before they finally find what they wanted. Furthermore, the smaller screen of the mobile devices makes conducting long research a tad uncomfortable. Check how your site is designed. Your users should be able to quickly find your business information, prices and products. If you let them make purchases on your mobile site, then the entire process, from product selection to checkout, should be as simple as possible.
Sites loading too slowly. While the speeds of mobile networks has gone up with the introduction of 4G and LTE networks in many places, in general, browsing the web on a mobile is a tad slower than browsing on a PC. Combined with the fact that mobile users are often in a bit of a hurry, if your site is too slow to display, they leave. Ensure that your mobile site is designed in a way that uses as little bandwidth as possible, while remaining functional and visually appealing. The faster it loads for the user, the more likely they are to do business with you as opposed to leaving.