Mobile Users Should be a Priority

In a recent report that hammers home the insight Google’s team found last year, Adobe found that It’s true that smartphones still account for only a minority (39%) of website visits in the US as of December 2017. However, with that figure likely to continue growing for the time being, the focus will likely continue shifting to smartphones. Consumers today are virtually linked to their mobile devices all the time. They use them to communicate, for entertainment, for work, to seek information, and to acquire or shop for products.

Meanwhile, the importance of a strong user experience on smartphones is brought further to light by data in the report showing that “visits from these devices are getting shorter. Between January 2015 and December 2017 visit time on smartphones declined by 7.3% and pages per visit by 8.6%. That leads the analysts to note that consumers are becoming accustomed to an optimal, efficient experience and that websites need to mind the shorter attention span and decreased tolerance for useless steps.”

On an encouraging note, smartphone visits are slowly becoming more valuable relative to desktop ones.In 2017, 57% of all search traffic came from a mobile device or tablet and smartphone revenue per visit was about 30% that of desktop revenue per visit. While that may seem low, it’s a considerable improvement from January 2015, up by 11% points. More importantly, the rate of growth projected will have mobile search and purchase dominating before we know it.

The analysis found that mobile phones were the “initial touch” device 40% of the time, just ahead of desktops (37%). That’s consistent with previous research indicating that smartphones are the primary device for launching shopping journeys.

Where phones really shine, however, is in moving the process along: mobile phones were used as the intermediary touch (neither the first nor the last touch) some 58% of the time!