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Mobile web visitor behaviour by device, –part 1–

August 23rd, 2010

Mobile web visitor behaviour by device, –part 1–

There’s been a lot of buzz on the internet about the growth of Android web traffic(http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/27/admob-android-passes-iphone-web-traffic-in-u-s/), but to date we haven’t seen a lot of discussion about the different browsing behaviours of users with these handsets.  We’ve selected some graphs showing relative browsing behaviours on five sites off the Mobify network, each of which get at least a million mobile page views per month.
In each of the graphs, we’ve sorted by the number of page views per visit of the mobile operating system.  To the right we also show the breakdown of the operating system as a percentage of site traffic.  Note — we have filtered out all other browsers than the ones listed above so this percentage is relative only between the browsers shown.
Sites A, B and C are blogs with a technology or geek appeal.  Sites D and E focus on celebrities and celebrity news. We can clearly see the impact of site content on the types of devices used to view content.   The difference in the audiences is notable in the percentage of the visits — the technology sites are dominated by iPhone and Android, with Blackberry accounting for an average of around 5% of traffic.  BlackBerry is a big player on the celeb sites though, coming in around 30% of total visits, slightly higher than Android.  The celeb sites also feature the lowest percentage of iPhone users, although iPhone users remain the most common type of web visitor.
More interesting is what behaviours are preserved even though the audiences are quite different. Android handset owners tend to dominate page views, averaging about 1.25 page views for every page viewed by an iPhone visitor across these sites. Almost across the board, iPhone users are the least likely to stick around. We’re still slicing and dicing data to see if we can find an answer as to why, but it’s definitely a pattern we see, and across a diverse number of sites.
Takeaways
Designing a great mobile site requires may require making some tradeoffs for your audience.  For sites with less technology oriented visitors, there is still a strong payoff in spending the time to optimize the site for non-touch devices that may have limited support for javascript and CSS.  This landscape is clearly changing, with RIM’s latest BlackBerry Torch offering an powerful browser that stacks up well against other smartphones on the market, but it will take at least a year for these devices to significantly displace existing devices.
Furthermore, despite AdMob’s announcement that Android is king for mobile web traffic, on our network we’re still seeing iPhone as the dominant player on the mobile web, though Android has posted solid gains in the past 6 months.  However, if Android users continue to show such strong site loyalty, they may be the most attractive visitors for advertising dollars in the months ahead.

There’s been a lot of buzz about the growth of Android web traffic, but to date we haven’t seen a lot of discussion about the different browsing behaviours of mobile web visitors with these handsets.  In this first post we’ll start the process of exploring how the type of mobile handset used affects mobile web behaviour.

We’ve selected some sites to show relative browsing behaviours on five sites off our network.  The sites have been randomly selected, however each of them receive a minimum of one million mobile page views per month.  In each of the graphs below, we’ve sorted by the number of page views per visit of the mobile operating system.  To the right we also show the breakdown of the operating system as a percentage of site traffic.  Note — we have filtered out all other browsers than the ones listed above so this percentage is relative only between the browsers shown.

Site A

Site A - Technology blog

Site B

Site B - Technology Blog

Site C

Site C - Technology Blog

Site D

Site D - Celeb news

Site E

Site E - Celeb news

Sites A, B and C are blogs with a technology appeal.  Sites D and E focus on celebrities and celebrity news. We can clearly see the impact of site content on the types of devices used to view content.  The technology sites are dominated by iPhone and Android, with Blackberry accounting for an average of only about 5% of traffic.  BlackBerry is a big player on the celeb sites though, coming in around 30% of total visits, slightly higher than Android.  The celeb sites also feature the lowest percentage of iPhone users, although iPhone users remain the most common type of web visitor.

More interesting is what behaviours are preserved even though the audiences are quite different. Android handset owners tend to dominate page views, averaging about 1.25 page views for every page viewed by an iPhone visitor across these sites. Almost across the board, iPhone users are the least likely to stick around. We’re still slicing and dicing data to see if we can find an answer as to why, but it’s definitely a pattern we see, and across a diverse number of sites.

Takeaways

Designing a great mobile site requires may require making some tradeoffs for your audience.  For sites with less technology oriented visitors, there is still a strong payoff in spending the time to optimize the site for non-touch devices that may have limited support for javascript and CSS.  This landscape is clearly changing, with RIM’s latest BlackBerry Torch offering an powerful browser that stacks up well against other smartphones on the market, but it will take at least a year for these devices to significantly displace existing devices.

Furthermore, despite AdMob’s announcement that Android is king for mobile web traffic, on our network we’re still seeing iPhone as the dominant player on the mobile web, though Android has posted solid gains in the past 6 months.  If Android usage continues to grow as a percentage of mobile web (and we expect it will!) and Android visitors continue to show such strong site loyalty, they may be the most attractive visitors for mobile web advertising spending in the months ahead.

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