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.

The biggest growth is detected in the use of the Apple iPad and Android phones. On average, the iPad has a 38% share in mobile visits, in November 2010 this was 28%. For phones using the Android operating system, the share in the mobile visits grew from 12.5% in November 2010 to 18% in May 2011.
The top 5 mobile operating systems currently are : iPad (38.1%), iPhone (30.8%), Android (18.1%), Blackberry OS (4.5%) and iPod (4, 1%). SymbianOs and Windows Mobile are now on the sixth and seventh place.

The 20 sites together attract more than 5 million visitors a month and are distributed over various sectors such as news, entertainment, travel, training and e-commerce. This study specifically looked at the visits to the normal websites, the figures are based on the Goolge Analytics accounts of these websites . Obviously these figures will differ from visits to special mobile sites and mobile apps.

Although the number of benchmark sites is set to increase, the published findings are currently not representative of the Netherlands as a whole. Our conclusions should therefore be viewed as observations and trends. This study was conducted by Mobilemetrics.nl, a collaboration between aFrogleap, Netprofiler and RapidSugar.

Mobile is a very popular medium among Markplaats users. Currently about 2% of the traffic is originating from a mobile device. Marktplaats also noted that the mobile traffic is growing this year with about 30 – 50% a month. It is observed that from 08:00 hours people start using the iPhone app, while the traffic peaks between 20:00 and 22:00. Apparently the use of a mobile is also very popular on the couch.

Geographical use:

The use of the Markplaats iPhone app in the 25 biggest cities in the Netherlands (More than 100 thousands residents) is studied, it is concluded that Leiden is relatively the biggest orgin of visits in this app. In the period between February until March Leiden counted relatively 0.28 visits per resident. Followed by Amsterdam and Utrecht with 0.22 visits per resident. Rotterdam and The Hague both scored 0.17 visits per resident. Emmen is found the least busy city, registering only 0.03 visits per resident. In the study both residents and people using the Markplaats app while visiting the city were counted.

Devices:

41.1% of the users is using an iPhone 4, 28.4% the iPhone 3GS and only 10% is using the older iPhone 3G. The application is also being used on iPod’s and iPad’s.

The Apple iPad is the most used mobile device in the last 3 months followed by the iPhone. More than one third of all mobile internet visits in March 2011 was originating from the iPad. The top 5 mobile operating systems currently is: iPad (34.4%), iPhone (33.9%), Android (16.9%), Blackberry OS (5.9%) and iPod (4.7 %). SymbianOs and Windows Mobile are currently on the sixth and seventh place. Remarkably, the use of the iPad was even slightly higher in January 2011 than in February and March.

In a similar analysis of the same 20 sites in October 2010, the percentage of mobile usage was at 2.0%. That’s an increase of 80% of mobile visits within a half year. The mobile visits as part of the total visits varies between 1.6% and 5.9% for these 20 sites. The sites together generate around 5 million visitors a month and are divided into various sectors such as news, entertainment, travel, training and e-commerce. This study specifically looked at the visit to the normal websites. Of course these figures will differ from visits to special mobile sites and mobile apps. This observation indicates that mobile devices are increasingly used for surfing and that the majority of these mobile devices are Apple products.

Mobilemetrics.nl bases its findings on information received from the 20 site owners and brands currently sharing their data with us. Our data partners represent 5 million site visitors a month. Although this number is set to increase, the published findings are currently not representative of the Netherlands as a whole. Our conclusions should therefore be viewed as observations and trends.

You can easily double this figure. Why? Because Android doesn’t show up as much as it’s being sold. About 80% of the measured views are from iPhone. Our tracker, which enables us to come up with these statistics, is based on a good old image in the emails. Android and other devices are underrepresented in these statistics because the iPhone automatically displays images and Android doesn’t.

The iPad is on an unstoppable conquest! As reported in earlier November the iPad has dramatically put it’s foot down on mobile internet traffic (iPad traffic boom). This also goes for mail. Of all the outbound email measured, the iPad is responsible of 1% of the views in December and is continuing to grow.

The data used for this claim is based on our benchmark of 350 commercial bulk and transactional mailings for 6 companies in the Netherlands and represents in total about 1 million email views a month.

Recent events:
Android just released Gingerbread and Honeycomb, and is ready to take on the tablet battle with the iOS on the iPad. It is speculated that the CES on January 2011 was for 90% focussed on Android. Competition is good news, but marketing managers have even more devices to account for in communication with the consumer. Now more than even it is important to have solid facts about customer behavior and trends when it comes to mobile usage of your target group, so you can be part of the Mobile Marketing Succes Stories.

MobileMetrics will continue to distribute valuable information to its partners to help them make business decisions based on the right information.

The iPhone is still by far the most common mobile device to visit websites in The Netherlands. More than a third of the mobile internet visits (38,9%) is done with a iPhone.  The Apple iPpad, which was introduced at the of July 2010 in the Netherlands, is responsible for 23% of all mobile internet traffic. This is a good second place. Other operating systems that frequently are used Android, Blackberry and SymbianOs. Windows Mobile and SymbianOS lose market share. The top 6 devices are:

The share of mobile users in the total internet visits varies heavily per website. For the 20 websites in this benchmark the mobile visit share is between 0.8% and 4.1%. In this research Apple’s total market share was 68,9%.

What kind of impact does this device have on your business? How to react properly to the adoption of this new device? And is the iPad already taking a significant portion of the website traffic? These questions are nowadays buzzing in the heads of digital marketers.

Mobile metrics was involved in the launch of a new mobile website for one of the biggest retailers in the Netherlands. This retailer has stores all over Holland and attracts the average Joe consumer. With the iPad just launched in the Netherlands the results of the iPad traffic were above all expectations. After approximately three weeks ‘air time’ the following statistics were retrieved:

As presented in the table above the iPad users are responsible for 12,5% of all visits to this mobile website and the iPad users view the most pages per visit (avg. 4.11). (Note that all Apple products share 55.8% of all visits). This means, also for iPad critics, there is definitely significant traffic originating from the iPad and cannot be ignored when building a new website.

What action do you have to take? The easy option is to display the normal website on the iPad, but if your website uses Flash elements and/or you care about user experience, this is not the way. The adobe flash website is for example totally useless on the iPad. (Screenshot 1)

The other option is to display the mobile version of the website on the iPad. These are always viewable on the iPad. But the iPad screen dimensions will generate white spaces and small text, which will not be optimal for user experience. The main Gmail page www.gmail.com is a ‘good’ bad example for this practice. (Screenshot 2)

Businesses in the US are already releasing their “iPad ready” websites like cnn.com, nytimes.com and vimeo.com perfectly designed for portrait and landscape views and optimal space usage, and they are right! Every business site should mature to a multi- platform/device website.

With this kind of mass adoption it can be concluded that the iPad deserves its own class and special interest. But don’t forget, new tablet devices of multiple manufacturers are being fabricated as we speak, like the Blackberry playbook and the Samsung galaxy tab but also the Google TV which have new dimensions and usability conventions. When these devices pop-up in our metrics we will blog about it to inform you.

Are you considering developing a multi-device website, what are your thoughts? Feel free to leave a comment.

Mobile metrics will elaborate on mobile trends, developments and opportunities in this December’s workshops click here for more information.

Note: This is an observation of a well-known retail chain, it cannot be generalized to all market segments.

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.

• Visit time of mobile visits is 40% lower
• Number of page views of mobile visits is 47% lower
• Conversion of mobile visits is 83% lower

To complete a transaction on a e-commerce website, it’s usually required to enter a significant amount of personal and financial information. It is therefore understandable that the conversion rate from mobile devices is significantly lower. Entering data using a mobile device is simply not as easy as when using a laptop or pc.

The benchmark study shows that the iPhone (58%) and iPod (12%) are the most used mobile devices to visit e-commerce websites. Other operating systems that are frequently used include Windows, SymbianOS, Blackberry and Android.

In the benchmark study Netprofiler has analyzed the Google Analytics statistics from 10 Dutch e-commerce websites. Only visits with devices where the screen width was less than 700 pixels are included in the research. These are almost certainly mobile devices. The visits per operating system are based on the first two months of 2010.

The gaming platforms (Nintendo Wii and Sony Playstation 3) are also used to visit websites. Their share in total numbers of visitors is still very limited (0.02%).

In the benchmark research Netprofiler has analyzed the Google Analytics statistics from 20 Dutch websites (news, e-commerce, travel, jobs, events). Only visits with browser width of less than 700 pixels are in the research. These are almost certainly mobile devices. The visits per operation system in the fourth quarter of 2009 are analyzed. Here is a weighted average determined.