Stop Losing 10% of Your Web Traffic and Mobilize Your Corporate Website

If you are a major consumer brand, publication or ecommerce site, you are well aware that mobile web users are a rapidly growing segment of your overall web audience. But what if you are a business to business organization? Do you really need to be vying for the attention of mobile visitors? And if so, what is the cost of not doing so?

While clearly every business is a bit different, we can begin finding some answers by looking at a host of sources for Internet Usage Statistics. One such source, NetMarketShare, shows that mobile browsing, as a percentage of overall web browsing, has grown from 3.79% to nearly 8% in the calendar year 2011 – a nearly 100% annual increase! While impressive indeed, the growth figures alone only tell a bit of the story of how the mobile revolution may impact your business.

Mobile Web Usage by the Numbers

To gain a little more insight into the problem, we began to look at some empirical data from many of our client sites that we’ve built and monitored over the past number of years. What we found was startling, but not totally unexpected. Overall, our average clients’ mobile traffic patterns mirror the findings of NetMarketShare. While a handful of sites remain in the low single digits in terms of mobile traffic, a number of them have crept up to 10% and above. While your individual site numbers may not be at 10% yet, every web visit is an opportunity to connect with prospects and potential customers, so we feel that it is imperative that every company or organization begins to take a serious look at developing a mobile web strategy…here’s why:

In looking at some very basic web analytics such as bounce rate, time spent on the site and page views, we see some marked differences in the behavior of mobile visitors to non-optimized sites as compared to their desktop counterparts:

• Bounce rates are on average 13% higher
• Page views are up to 50% fewer
• The average time spent on the site is up to 75% less

When you look at these factors, the conclusion is clear. A non-mobile optimized website virtually eliminates the value of having mobile visitors at all.

The Benefits of a Mobile Optimized Site

On the other hand, when we look at clients who have mobile-optimized sites, we see desktop and mobile visitor stats that are nearly identical and sometimes even better for mobile device users. Our conclusion is that it’s never too soon to consider a mobile web strategy. Sales is, and always has been a numbers game. With the cost of customer acquisition being what it is and with your competition only one click away, can you really afford to be losing 10% of your web prospects?

Remember, whether your mobile web traffic is 1% or 10% of your overall traffic, the numbers will only continue to rise, making a mobile website a business necessity.

There are many ways to mobilize a website and we’ll cover them in the weeks ahead. If you have any questions, please visit the Mobile Applications page of our website or reach out to us and we can discuss your mobile strategy.