No matter how sophisticated a technology is, if the user experience is frustrating, it won’t last long. That same principle applies to your website and how well you serve your mobile visitors. An excellent way to check and see how your website is faring among the untethered is to implement Google Analytics. This system can roughly tell the difference between a desktop visitor and mobile one. If you’re seeing people on mobile staying at your website only a short while before leaving, your website’s design might be part of the problem.

Evidence points to 50% of all online shopping taking place with a mobile device. You might think that’s because everyone seems to have a phone or tablet these days. For sure, that’s part of the reason, but it’s not the entire story. Mobile visitors will likely overtake desktop visitors sometime in the next few years, and not just on shopping websites. The devices themselves have become more capable. Their browsers have gone from being rather primitive, barely usable half-measures to almost as capable as their desktop counterparts. 

The Trends

Let’s start with the desktop browser market so that we get good contrast to mobile. Here is the market share of desktop browsers as of this writing, according to https://gs.statcounter.com:

  1. Google Chrome: 65%
  2. Apple Safari: 18.34%
  3. Microsoft Edge: 3.4%
  4. FireFox: 3.29%
  5. Samsung Internet: 3%
  6. Opera: 2%

Now let’s look at tablet visitor trends, again from gs.statcounter.com:

  1. Google Chrome: 44%
  2. Apple Safari: 42%
  3. Android: 11%
  4. The rest are less than 1%

Finally, let’s look at cellphone visitor trends:

  1. Google Chrome: 63%
  2. Apple Safari: 23%
  3. Samsung Internet: 5%
  4. UC Browser: 2%
  5. Opera: 2% 

You can see from the above that Google Chrome and Apple Safari dominate all form factors. If you’re a website owner, this means you should visit your website in those browsers so that you know what your visitors are experiencing. If you have never done that, now’s a great time to start.

According to https://www.broadbandsearch.net/blog/mobile-desktop-internet-usage-statistics, in 2011, mobile devices comprised just 6% of all traffic. By 2021 that figure has grown to 56%. As devices improve, so will the browsers. One day soon, they may be just as capable as their desktop counterparts. 

Clearly, it is essential to cater to your mobile audience. Now, let’s finish with one final stat. This one comes from https://vivial.net/resource-center/marketing-statistics/#mobile-usage; 60% of Google searches are conducted on a mobile device. You don’t want to be omitted from Google searches, but if your website has poor or no responsive design to it, that’s what will happen. Back in 2015, Google rolled out a mobile-friendly update called “Mobilegeddon”. This revamped how Google ranks websites, cutting out websites that did not meet basic responsive design criteria. 

Fortunately, just about any website can be brought into alignment with responsive design best practices. The cost for doing so varies, of course, but given the trends we’ve just discussed, it is well worth the expense.