It was reported in November 2016 that there are now officially more Internet users accessing the web from their mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets than from their desktop computers. Data released by StatCounter shows that only 48.7% of visits came from desktops or notebooks while 51.3% of all web visits came from mobile devices.
The shift towards mobile devices over the years has been due mostly to internet users increased appetite for video. With the development of high-speed 4G data networks allowing people to watch more video from YouTube, on-demand programming services such as Netflix, more and more people are choosing to be online using their mobile devices for their portability allowing viewing on-the-go. However, online viewers aren’t replacing their laptops or desktops entirely when it comes to online viewing. Instead, they are watching the video across multiple screens or start watching from one device and switch to another if they need to be on-the-move.
It has been surveyed that two-thirds of adults own a smartphone with the average amount of time that they spent online on it has to almost 2 hours per day. Approximately 34% of all adults who owned a smartphone used their smartphones within the first five minutes of waking up.
“Mobile internet is now growing at the expense of all other media,” said Jonathan Barnard, Zenith’s Media Consumption Forecasts head of forecasting. “Seventy percent of Internet use is now on a mobile, and the use of a desktop for internet will fall by almost 16 percent, this year.”
“The expansion of mobile Internet consumption is an opportunity for traditional publishers and broadcasters, as much as a threat,” he said. “Traditional media has invested heavily in online brand extensions, and some of them have larger audiences online than they ever had for the offline products.”
What this means for businesses
The debate has long been over that to compete in the market today; businesses need to be mobile-centric, concentrating on both mobile apps and mobile sites. There are still businesses who haven’t quite embraced the mobile-first approach. Those are the companies that are losing sales for failing to create a better mobile experience for their potential customers.
Consider that 80% of moms have their mobile phones with them for the majority of the day with 33% making online purchases using those devices. Many of us research the products we are interested in on our mobiles before we visit the retail store.
To convert more of your website visitors into customers, your business needs to offer a good user experience to both your traditional website audience as well as your mobile visitors. Because more internet users are now viewing the web on their smartphones, they are more likely to see your mobile site before they ever see your desktop website. If they do not have a good experience such as the one they would have if you had a mobile responsive site, they are more likely to move on out of frustration or because your site was just too difficult to navigate because it was not built for mobile viewing.
Here’s a video from PeakEvolve.com — a web agency that deals with mobile friendly websites — that shows what an effective, mobile firendly website can do for your business.
