When Bango surveyed the Top 20 most trafficked PC website(according to Nielsen Online), they found that half of these sites
did not work well on leading mobile phones - despite the fact that
typically 5% of visitors to PC websites now come from mobile devices,
up from 1% a year ago.
The problem is that PC websites are not adapting
fast enough to match mobile browsing trends and are failing to present
mobile-friendly versions of their sites, notes their news release.
Many online businesses questioned by Bango admitted they do not know
how much mobile-originated traffic is hitting their PC site. Bango's
research reveals that between 3-10% of on-line traffic to a PC website
now comes from users entering web addresses on their mobile device.
Bango has responded to this significant trend by releasing a service
called "Analytics for PCs". This simple plug-in tool measures the
actual number of mobile phone users hitting a PC web site and provides
detailed metrics of these mobile visitors including the percentage of
mobile traffic as a unique visitor count plus the country, network and
device mobile users connect through. It provides the vital data needed
by on-line brands to develop their mobile web strategy.
It's not just iPhone users that are regularly accessing the internet
from their phones. Researchers at IDC say that 1.3 billion people will
connect to the Internet via mobile phones by end of 2008, and the vast
majority of these mobile browsers are using mass market phones from
Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Motorola.
"Our figures indicate that up to 10 out of every 100 customers are
now routinely entering web addresses from their phones and hitting a
site designed only with PC users in mind, which results in a bad
experience," said Anil Malhotra, SVP of Marketing and Alliances at
Bango. "Businesses should be asking now which handsets, countries and
languages matter most to their business and developing a mobile
strategy to match this."
Some mobile network operators are routinely transcoding desktop
websites to fit better on their subscriber's phones. While this
improves the formatting of PC web pages when viewed on a phone, it is
no substitute for a properly designed mobile site, with thought given
to relevant content, the right mobile feature set and easy mobile
navigation. Made-for mobile websites generally have a simpler layout
with content that's relevant for a mobile user in the top slot on the
home page.
Bango Analytics for PCs is available as part of an Early Access
Program at www.bango.com/eap. The webmaster puts a line of code into
the home page of the PC website and Bango starts measures unique
visitors to the website from mobile devices with specific details on
the users' country, network and device. All the data is viewable from
the Bango Management tools console in real-time.
* Bango surveyed the Top 20 most trafficked PC websites as published
by Nielsen Online, July 2008. Tests were carried out on the Motorola V3
Razr and Nokia 6300 on AT&T in the US and Vodafone in the UK. The
full results are published at blog.bango.com.