In following up on my recent post about mobile websites and the number sites that don't work on traditional mobile devices I decided to post a question to the LinkedIn community. While the answers ranged, most responders who indicated they didn't have one said it either because they didn't feel it made sense for their business priorities or their traffic stats showed mobile wasn't enough. While I understand the priority argument I'm not inclined to agree with the traffic one. Mobile isn't like traditional browsing so when you apply a traditional set of metrics, you're setting yourself up to make bad assumptions (see the chart for some data to use in making good ones instead).
Why do I say this? Well let's think about the typical mobile request for a second. Unless your site is about games, news, social networking or other consumable content chances are any mobile request is going to be fairly short and focused [p.s. that's a good thing]. Your mobile visitors may want to find store locations, get a list of current promotions, search product pricing or availability, find a phone number or perform one of a handful of other functions. Simple functions with focused needs means there's less reason for page consumption and less interest in browsing around just for the heck of it but a lot more possibility from each and every request.
Mobile users are on older phones (which makes up the vast bulk of people today... there's less than 10MM iPhones in the US market) are also limited to sites that have alternative versions -- so your site simply doesn't work well on mobile devices there's no reason why they would continue on around any longer and no reason why they would return. Thus less traffic, uniques & pageviews. And for those of you who mention other browsers like Opera, would you tell your main website visitors to ditch internet explorer for something else to shop on your site? Didn't think so.
And much like with the basic smartphone, if you like flash as much as a few of my former clients you can kiss the iPhone and probably the next few generations of knockoffs goodbye as well. If someone can't use your site well, why would they return to increase your stats?
Even if your site does render well on the more advanced mobile phones (iPhone, etc...) surfing is still going to be different and so are the metrics. There's certainly the possibility people can browse page after page looking through your products and exploring your site but is that a real expectation? If they can't buy there's even less reason to continue to surfing so, usage gets changed, requests become about research about offline about future purchases and that means different metrics. Furthermore, chances are you designed your site to look great in a traditional monitor with a decent resolution so do you really think someone on a 3-4" screen wants to zoom and pan and zoom for 15 minutes even if they are interested in exploring your site in more detail? Just because someone trades up to a bigger phone that can surf the web like a desktop computer doesn't mean they want to. So again, less pageviews.
So again, I challenge you to think about your own mobile presence in a different way than you think about anything on your site. Forget pageviews, consider uniques. Ignore what people do now and question what they would like to do with your site - it may not be a whole lot compared to your typical site visitor but if its transaction related it may be worth a whole lot more than someone clicking endlessly around the web. Let me know your thoughts.
Don't believe me? Think your stats tell the whole story about mobile adoption rates? Checkout the chart from Forrester Research on the left.
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