Like many forum members, I have Google Analytics installed on most, if not all, of my client websites. Amongst other things, GA reports the number of mobile users a particular website gets, usually as a percentage of overall users.
At what point should my clients seriously consider adding either a mobile version to their existing website or redesigning their existing site so that it’s responsive?
Well, there’s no hard-n-fast number, as far as I know, but I’ve often heard 25%-30% thrown around. I would check to see how the site looks on a variety of devices as-is and use that as baseline for any decision. I suppose it also depends on how important mobile traffic is to their business. For example, if they’re selling a product or service then maybe they want to optimize the user-experience for the broadest market possible. On the other hand if it’s a cat blog then maybe not.
Todd
At what point should my clients seriously consider adding either a mobile version to their existing website or redesigning their existing site so that it’s responsive?
If you have any empirical or just anecdotal statistics about the ages of your visitors, there’s a strong bias in the “newly-wed or nearly-dead” age groups toward mobile devices – phones and tablets. A lot of this calculus depends on who you want to attract, not who’s coming to your site. After all, if they’re coming to your site, then they may be happy with it as is. As Todd mentioned, you should look at how it appears on a wide range of devices. Mobile Safari is very very good at rendering desktop Web sites in the small screen. But if your stats show a lot of mobile users leaving after one or two pages, then that’s a “tell” that you should be investing more effort in that audience.
Walter
On Nov 30, 2013, at 11:07 AM, Todd wrote:
Well, there’s no hard-n-fast number, as far as I know, but I’ve often heard 25%-30% thrown around. I would check to see how the site looks on a variety of devices as-is and use that as baseline for any decision. I suppose it also depends on how important mobile traffic is to their business. For example, if they’re selling a product or service then maybe they want to optimize the user-experience for the broadest market possible. On the other hand if it’s a cat blog then maybe not.
At what point should my clients seriously consider adding either a mobile version to their existing website or redesigning their existing site so that it’s responsive?
Thanks guys. Here are the latest monthly stats for the client who is asking:
Desktop: 237 visits, 21.94% bounce rate, 8.80 pgs per visit
Mobile: 65 visits, 43.08% bounce rate, 3.08 pgs per visit
Tablet: 38 visits, 31.58% bounce rate, 5.95 pgs per visit
Desktop Use: 69.7%
Mobile/Tablet Use: 30.3%
By far, the two most popular mobile devices for this website are the iPhone and iPad. As you can see, this website has relatively low traffic and I know both owners use iPhones to access the site quite a bit, so I’m not sure how much that is affecting these numbers.