We recently discussed in our “Know Your Mobile Trends Before React” post that your company should take a long look at your website’s mobile visitor statistics before creating your mobile experience.
Our previous post warned companies to take a data-driven approach to their mobile website strategy and avoid haphazardly playing catch up with their competition.
Now, with that reiterated, we’ve got some interesting mobile website statistics from Smashing Magazine’s “Study of Trends in Mobile Design” survey.
Smashing’s survey is thorough and covers a wide variety of mobile website configurations, specifically from a Web developer and Web designer’s point-of-view. They surveyed the top 100 websites on Google’s Ad Planner list.
We found the following three areas of particular interest and recommend you share this survey with your Web development team.
The Rise of Mobile Websites
71% of the websites surveyed offered a mobile website to their visitors.
The endless buzz surrounding mobile websites and mobile marketing has certainly sparked some of the top websites in the world to take notice and create unique mobile browsing experiences.
There appears to be no standard format for creating mobile websites. As always, we recommend running mobile device type reports and getting the real numbers on what mobile devices your visitors use most while consuming your content.
The Demise of WAP Mobile Websites
Only 16% of the mobile websites were WAP-enabled websites.
The rise of full browser mobile phones (eg. iPhone & Android) has dramatically decreased the need for WAP-enabled websites.
Unless you’re marketing to developing parts of the world, the WAP mobile websites should be phased out.
Apps Competing with Mobile Websites
53% had a mobile website and a mobile app
Smartphone manufacturers are iterating at a rapid pace, but often times their mobile browsing experience is lackluster compared to the user-experience of native mobile phone apps.
Not all mobile phone app experiences are good, and unfortunately, many people settle for a low-cost solution that delivers a poor mobile user experience.
You should give careful consideration to the amount of resources you’re going to allocate to mobile website and mobile app development. It may be more cost effective and beneficial to your users to focus solely on the mobile browser experience.
Full Report: Study of Trends in Mobile Design
Photo Credit: Johan Larsson // CC