A benchmark study of 20 Dutch websites reveals that the Apple iPad generates almost half (48%) of the mobile visits to these websites. The study shows that in November 2011 7.5% of total website visits was generated by mobile devices like smartphones, tablets and mobile music players. A year ago, in November 2010, the observed average for the same sites was 2.2%, so the mobile visits more than tripled in a year. If the growth continues at this rate, it is expected that in Q2 of 2012 this will be more than 10%.

Growth of mobile web traffic

The biggest growth is detected in the use of the Apple iPad. On average, the iPad has a 48% share in mobile visits, in November 2010 this was 28%. For phones using the Android operating system, the share in mobile visits grew from 12.5% in November 2010 to 21.0% in November 2011. The top mobile systems currently are : iPad (48%), iPhone (25%), Android (21%), Blackberry OS (1.6%).

The 20 sites together attract more than 5 million visitors a month and are distributed over various sectors such as news, entertainment, travel, education and e-commerce. This study specifically looked at the visits to the normal desktop websites, the figures are based on the Google Analytics accounts of these websites . Obviously these figures will differ from visits to special mobile sites and mobile apps. The percentage of mobile visits per website differs from 3% to 13%.
As the number of benchmark sites is limited, the published findings are not totally representative of the Netherlands as a whole. Our conclusions should therefore be viewed as observations and trends.

Finally your regular site is user friendly, your conversion rate is increasing and there you have the mobile website trend. So you can start all over again. Mobile websites have been around for some time, but since the introduction of the iPhone mobile internet is getting past the early adapter stage. Creating a mobile website is not just translating the one you have into something similar but smaller. Compressing a complete website into the size of a mobile phone screen is like compressing your car into the size of a dinky toy and expecting you can actually drive it. Not going to happen. The screen of a mobile phone is getting bigger with the introduction of the touch screen, but even then it’s just a fraction of the size of your screen at home.

To make your content accessible on all mobile phones you first have to choose whether you create an application or a whole mobile website. This decision still depends a lot on the functionalities you would like to offer.

Choose a mobile website if your content consists of many short articles, some pictures and sometimes a small video. For a newspaper or blog this kind of mobile website works excellent. But you have to keep it basic. Make use of the standards and conventions out there. If you would like to show your mobile website on as many phones as possible it must be scalable for different screen sizes, use only hyperlinks for navigation and make proper use of CSS for mobile devices. Key is to label your categories in a good way. If nobody understands them, navigation will be difficult for your users. Getting advice from an information architect won’t be a waste of money if there is a lot of content to choose from. When you’re not sure about the understandability of your links it is also possible to do a card sorting session. This is a common research method for regular websites, but equally effective for mobile websites.

Advantage of an application above a website is that you can ask money for it. A lot of apps are a bit disappointing after installing so paying for it can be a hurdle. That’s why many applications are also available in a light version to trigger the potential consumer. They can get used to the app and then decide to pay for the extra functionality if it’s worth it.

So choosing web or app really depends on the type of content you have to offer. If it is for content browsing like a newspaper a mobile website suits best. You can reach a lot of different mobile phones and are more flexible. If you need more interaction for your application, want to use more functionality of the phone or would like to offer a better integrated user experience then create an app.

After the introduction of the iPad it has become clear. The iPhone and smartphone hype is over. Why I am stating something so obvious? While we are awaiting the much hyped tablet, the iPhone is ready for it’s fourth meaningful operating system update. Competing operating systems like Android are growing rapidly with hardware partners like HTC and Samsung. The entire smartphone industry is evolving from a niche market to a 180 million units per year business (Gartner).