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There’s a whole lot of hype surrounding mobile and smartphone use lately. However, we need to separate the hype from the facts in order to make a wise business decision about investing in a mobile website.
American Express Open Forum first published this article, Take Your Site Mobile on October 5, 2012. The story was also picked up by Mashable shortly thereafter which of course, started a social media sharing frenzy.
In the article, author Lauren Indvik makes some pretty compelling statements, but are they THAT compelling?
Well, let’s look at the claims and compare apples with apples.
First the article states:
Mobile traffic currently makes up 10 percent of global Internet traffic, and next year more people will use mobile phones than PCs to get online, according to Gartner.
That 10% statement is a bit misleading. Yes, it’s true that the current mobile traffic is 10% of the global Internet traffic, but have you looked at where all that global traffic is coming from?
Here are the sobering stats according to MobiThinking, the collector of mobile data.
We see that the biggest cellphone users globally are located in China. So how many mobile sales do you think you’ll get from those users?
In order to make the statistic really compelling, you need to break down the amount of mobile traffic per country and equate that to the amount of mobile sales or users. Lumping the global Internet traffic is misleading – especially in the U.K. where the mobile use is lower than in the U.S.
Additionally, the second half of the quoted sentence states a guess made by Gartner. Maybe they are very good guessers but I’ve seen them be wrong a few times. But let’s assume that they are correct and more people will use mobile phones than PCs to get online. Is that again globally? If so, are the majority of those new users going to also be in China?
In the sentence immediately following the guess, you read:
Purchases made on mobile devices amounted to $6.7 billion in the U.S. last year—about 8 percent of total online sales—and are expected to nearly double to $11.6 billion this year. By 2015, U.S. mobile sales are forecast to reach $31 billion.
8% in sales shouldn’t be ignored but, you have to weigh that against 8% of your total sales vs. the cost to develop the mobile site. If you’re a small business and 8% of your annual sales is under 1,000 GBP, you might want to hold off on that mobile investment.
The quote also says that mobile sales are forecast to reach $31 billion by 2015. Yes and my business plan forecasted that I’d be a millionaire by now. I’m not even close!
A lot can happen between now and 2015. Did we all expect or forecast the global economic downturn we’re experiencing? There are far too many variables that could affect any forecast and a wise business owner should never speculate on a forecast.
So, when is going mobile with a website wise? When you have analytics showing that at least 20% of your sales are coming from mobile users or you see a rapidly shifting trend of sales from mobile users.
With pinch/zoom technology in almost all the smartphones, your website may not perform as horribly as you think. Want to find out how mobile users are seeing your site? Just go to your website from your phones browser! Try out the purchase process and see how well it functions. You may be quite surprised!
About Debbie Mahler
Debbie Mahler is an expert in the field of PC and Internet Security and the owner of Internet Tech Specialists. She has students from around the world signing up for her online courses, and hundreds of regular listeners to her weekly radio show. You can find more information at http://InternetTechSpecialists.com
[...] Debbie Mahler posts the contrary “Ready For A Mobile Website In 2013? You Might Want To Wait” at SavvyMarketers. [...]
Thanks for the analysis Debbie. It’s good to debunk or at least challenge some of the hype that is out there. What’s you thinking on responsive sites? I have two sites, both built with wordpress. The newer one uses a response theme whereas the older one uses a plugin to produce a mobile friendly version of the site when viewed from a phone or tablet.
Either option is fine Gavin. The point is to use something that allows the optimum experience for mobile users – whether that’s a responsive theme or a plugin that accomplishes the same thing. There really is no right way to do it. The best thing to do is to visit your own sites using your mobile device and see which one of the two perform best on that platform. If the responsive theme is better, use that on both sites. If the plugin is better, use that one instead. You always want to view your sites as your visitors are seeing them. That means you should test them not only with all the browsers (Firefox, Safari, IE, Chrome and Opera), but also with the mobile browsers from Dolphin and Firefox through the default browser in your particular mobile device. You will then be able to experience what your visitors are experiencing and you’ll be able to tweak from there.
Many many people now have smart phones, just look at the number of people sitting in the cafe or on the train peering intently at their mobile phone whilst surfing the net. They’re using their phone to access the internet or social networking sites. Even my mother in her late 70′s has one and uses it to access the internet. I use my smart phone more than my PC these days.
I think it is good to challenge the hype as Gavin mentioned, but it is also good to look around you locally to see how the people you want to connect with are likely to access the internet. You have to connect with your potential customers and design to keep them interested. At this moment in time this means being responsive.
I totally agree with your observations Julia. And that’s why it’s always a good idea to look over your analytics dashboard to see exactly what technology your visitors are using. The issue I was addressing in this post was the push by many web designers to get people to move to – or add – a mobile site. That’s not always necessary if your site is designed to be responsive. That’s why I recommended looking at your own site with your mobile device to see what experience your visitors are having. In working with small-to-midsized business owners, I educate them on what they need to know so they can avoid unnecessary expenses in the world of hype. And while it’s not hype that a site has to be responsive, as you pointed out, it’s really a necessity. But spending unnecessarily when you already have a responsive site and just never knew it isn’t a wise business decision in the current – or any – economy. That was what I had tried to point out.