Mobile Viewers of Blogs

Ok, geeky Sunday topic for sure, but I was looking at my Google Analytics data and decided to delve into what I could find out about mobile devices viewing TDA Training. To me, interesting stuff. To some of you, probably not, but here goes, anyway.

Figure 1, total mobile visits

Clearly there’s a strong upward trend, and this is scaled to a monthly view, but you can see that there’s an average of 17% growth per month. If my math is wrong, it’s still a lot of increase since the end of ‘09 and the beginning of ‘10.

 

 

 

 

For you soldiers in the Smartphone wars, this one may be more interesting. Which mobile OS has the lead?
Figure 2, % visits by mobile OS
 

The interesting part about this for me is that the iPod was so high. Didn’t have any idea that many people used those devices for browsing. There has been a change in the stats, which I won’t detail in this post, from the clear dominance of the iPhone to the increase in the Android numbers in the most recent months – about equal. And the iPad has gone from zero to hero in a short period of time. Some of these, I have no idea what they are: Danger Hiptop??? [Extra question marks are for emphasis]

While we’re talking about OS, who are the biggest readers by number of pages per visit?
#1 Sony at 3.11
#2 Android at 2.96
#3 Nokia at 2.89

The stingiest page turners
#10 Blackberry at 2.11
#9 iPhone with 2.18

For us bloggers, how do mobile readers compare to desktop/laptop readers? In other words, how different are their habits? Over this period of time:

Pages/Visit 2.46 (Site Avg: 2.67 (-8.08%))

Avg. Time on Site 00:01:37 (Site Avg: 00:01:25 (+15.32%))

Bounce Rate 19.71% (Site Avg: 23.23% (-15.16%))

What this says is that these mobile readers read a few less pages (8%) than desktop/laptop users, but average 15% more time on the site, and average more than one page 15% more than desktop/laptop readers (bounce rate). Now, these figures are changing fast, and I expect will change faster still as the market evolves with the increasing popularity of the table/iPad, as well as the smartphone advances. Even the ebook readers are now getting into the game.

What impact should this have on bloggers? Should the way we write and market change? Over the whole period, less than 5% of our readers used a mobile device, but over the past three months, that has increased to almost 8% of total visits. Clearly, things are changing.