With so many of us seemingly totally fascinated and absorbed by our mobile phones at all hours of the day and night, it’s tempting and all too easy to conclude that these clever devices must be the meaning of life when it comes to all business decisions. But is that true, or are some customers and prospects still wedded to viewing websites on Desktop computers or other devices?

Let’s look at the facts derived from an analysis of traffic from just over 1% of the world’s billion-plus websites. That’s a pretty sizeable sample and should be robust!

On a global basis, we’ve jumped wholeheartedly into using PDA-style large-screen mobile phones over the last five years. Prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, browsing online was a 50/50 split between Desktop and Mobile devices. It was probably more truthfully around 48%/48%, as back then, around 4% of users used Tablet devices.

Since then, mobile devices have stolen shares from tablets and desktops, and today, the split is around 2% tablets, 56% mobile devices, and just 42% using a desktop in an office or home setting. Desktop probably also includes most laptops as whilst there is increasing overlap between devices with touchscreens, reversible screens becoming tablets, etc, laptops are often used in a sitting environment akin to researching and working, rather than, say, walking and talking when out shopping.

These figures vary by country as Mobile devices are more easily adopted in areas with low ISDN connectivity but the trend towards Mobile devices is common everywhere. However, this does mask some essential factors and throws up some challenges.

One of the biggest challenges is website compatibility on Mobile devices. Despite all the much-lauded technical platforms that are enough for you to create, say, a desktop-friendly website that automatically renders and resizes/reorders content in a manner suitable for smaller screens, the sad fact is this is often a misguided optimism. How many websites do you visit on your Mobile that are easy to use, load quickly, and have all content immediately visible and easily accessible with forms simple to complete? Rarely. A more authentic experience is poor loading pages and images and navigation hanging half off the screen, sometimes never to be seen again even if you turn the Mobile landscape.

Does this matter?

Aside from caring whether we annoy prospective customers or put them off browsing or placing orders, it should matter because it upsets search engines, notably Google. When they realise they are pushing results to a suboptimal website that doesn’t render well, they penalise the business because you are, quite simply, making them look bad. They want easy-to-use websites at the top.

I said there was good news.

While the overall share of mobile traffic is forever up, the good news is that not all traffic is equal in importance, at least from a business perspective.

In just the same way that Google is the go-to resource when making business purchases (but is not the top tool for searching for everything due to people’s personal interests, which make social channels, etc., more suitable), the same applies to Desktop / Laptop versus Mobile.

So, while there will be some variance between businesses (some companies are selling to people on the move, so mobile results are vital), in the vast majority of business purchase decisions, customers will be based in an office environment at home or work and will be making research choices and buying decisions on machines with bigger screens.

We think the outtake is simple. At the moment, a large proportion of business is still conducted on desktop (more than the percentages suggest due to this bias of where decisions in business are made versus, say, home shopping), so don’t ignore desktop at your peril. But most companies need to increase expenditure with good web developers improving the Mobile effectiveness of their websites, changing the platform and embarking on an entire website migration if needs be (a good SEO agency can help with this) as the trend is moving that way. No businesses can afford to be penalised for poor performance by the search engines.

Suppose they do decide to penalise your business for having a poor mobile iteration of your business, even if customers don’t currently transact that way. In that case, it will impact your Desktop results too, as when the search engines enforce lower prominence, they tend to do it across the board, so everything needs to work and work well on all channels.

Stuart Haining
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