I've been sorting through Google Analytics today to see which of our clients are getting mobile traffic. Not surprisingly, they're all getting it. I'd say relative to the overall traffic, the mobile slice of the pie is similar on all sites. What's not similar, though, is the the bounce rate, which is the amount of people staying on that site and the amount of people leaving without doing anything.
On a lot of our sites, the bounce rate for the normal site hovers around 30%-40%, where the mobile sites are closer to 60-70%.
It makes sense. Most of these people are accessing a regular site on their mobile phone, so it's not surprising that the bounce rate is a lot higher. It's just harder to use.
So I compared this to a few of the mobile sites we've developed and noticed that just having that mobile friendly homepage in place seems to really level out the bounce rate. It brings it right back down to that 30-40% range, similar to the desktop site.
Just a little insight on how important that first impression is and why a mobile format is becoming more necessary for your mobile users.
Let's take a look at four fundamental reasons why people bounce from your site:
1. Website design and user experience
It's just too hard to use. Too cluttered, ugly or confusing.
2. Navigation
Users can't figure out how to navigate the site or how to find the information they're looking for.
3. Content
Content is hard to find or hard to read, with all that swiping, resizing, etc.
4. Technical issues
The site doesn't function properly or just looks odd. Are you running code that won't work on a mobile device?
The Good News and Bad News
These are all inherent problems you run into when simply ignoring mobile. But they are all very easy to fix with a little mobile love from MINDSCAPE.
If you're an analytics client of MINDSCAPE, get in touch with me if you'd like to know what kind of mobile traffic you're getting and if you're interested in providing a nice mobile alternative to your users.
Check your own site out on your phone if you haven't already.
Mark Swanson is the creative director for MINDSCAPE at Hanon McKendry. He also specializes in mobile development.
