Mobile marketing statistics compilation

Mobile marketing statistics compilation

Statistics on consumer mobile usage and adoption to inform your mobile marketing strategy mobile site design and app development

Today, according to the latest Digital Future in Focus report from comScore, we're long past this tipping point in some countries with India, Mexico and Indonesia having more than up to four times higher smartphone vs desktop audience.

The mobile statistics that the team at Smart Insights curate in the regular updates to this article are grouped under these headings for key questions marketers need to answer about mobile to help them compete:

TOPIC 01. Time spent using mobile media

TOPIC-02. Percentage of consumers using mobile devices

TOPIC-03. How many website visits are on mobile vs desktop devices?

TOPIC-04. Mobile conversion rates vs desktop and visit share for e-commerce sites?

TOPIC-05. Mobile app vs mobile site usage?

TOPIC-06. How important are mobile ads?

TOPIC-07. What percentage of Google Searches are on mobile?

Countries covered in this compilation?

The United States and United Kingdom are the main countries covered for which there are many reports. In the Ofcom international benchmark we also cover the main European markets, i.e. France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden. Australia and Japan are also covered.

A great source for understanding mobile usage is the Digital Future in Focus report comScore Digital Future in Focus report covering 9 global markets (USA, Canada, UK, Spain, Italy, Brazil, Mexico, China and Indonesia). It clearly shows how mobile dominates in minutes spent across countries.

So that's the intro showing the importance of mobile, let's dig into the details to prove it.

TOPIC-01. How much time do consumers spend using mobile media?

Mobile media use varies through the day. This is important to understand for day parting, i.e. buying Ad Words and display media. This day part media use from comScore Global Digital Future in Focus shows how desktop is still important for daytime at work audiences, but Tablet and smartphone dominate in the evening.

The implications are clear - if you're not able to reach your audience through mobile search or display, or you're not providing a satisfactory mobile experience you will miss out compared to competitors who are. 

Mobile only

Mobile-only social Networks like Snapchat are also growing rapidly in popularity, and this is driving increases in time spent on mobile devices. For more information, see our article on Snapchat marketing statistics.

TOPIC-02. Percentage of consumers using mobile devices?

This end 2017 Ofcom international benchmark shows the global popularity of using different digital devices in representative countries.

This interesting visual from comScore also part of their digital future in focus shows the picture that marketers need to build up. This panel data shows that the majority of consumers are multiplatform and will often be multi-screening, accessing sites on mobile or desktop, so consistent experiences across device need to be deployed.

TOPIC-03. How many website visits are on mobile vs desktop devices?

However, we need to be careful with interpreting data on hours spent, since we spend most of our time on smartphones checking email and using social media. This has led to the common mantra of 'Mobile-First' design which I think is dangerous, or at least oversimplistic!

Eric Schmidt, then Chairman of Google talked about a Mobile-First approach. The reality is that while smartphone use is overwhelmingly popular for some activities such as social media, messaging and catching up with news and gossip, the majority of consumers in western markets also have desktop (and tablet) devices which they tend to use for more detailed review and purchasing. So we need to think about strategies to engage what comScore call the Multichannel Majority not simply 'mobile first' or 'smartphone adoption'.

This explains why mobile conversion rates are much lower in retail and why the breakdown between traffic for retail sites is broadly equal between smartphone and desktop. Audience measurement platform comScore has talked for some time about strategies to engage and measure the multiplatform majority across devices and I think there will, or should be more focus on that in the years ahead.

This UK data also shows the importance of the multichannel majority in sectors like Retail and to a lesser extent banking, but that for some niches like weather 'mobile first' is more accurate.

Their latest data for the US is striking in shows how the multi-device majority dominate, particularly amongst millennials.

Although mobile is growing in importance, this older data from Adobe's latest Digital Index (not updated yet) shows that in all industries the majority of visits are still on desktop.

So with so many site visits still on desktop, it's important when designing using a responsive web design that the desktop experience isn't degraded and this has led to many larger businesses using an adaptive web design where layout and content are tailored for desktop, tablet and smartphone screen dimensions.

TOPIC-04. Mobile device conversion rates and visit share for e-commerce sites?

We have a separate compilation of e-commerce conversion stats if you're creating a business case for mobile optimised sites as explained in our mobile marketing strategy guide, this data is also valuable since it shows the variation in conversion rate by mobile type. This is the latest data from Monetate for their retail clients showing conversion rates. It shows this rule of thumb:

Smartphone conversion is around one-half of desktop conversion rates.

Their latest quarterly update from 2017 shows conversion rates to add-to-basket or cart and below sale across the last 4 quarters, up to the Q3 2016:

The data clearly shows that Smartphone conversion rates are much lower than for desktop - important if you're making the business case for a mobile responsive site.

This report from the Adobe Digital Index retail report has a simple table comparing cart and visit (overall) conversion on smartphone vs tablet vs desktop. It shows that visit conversion is nearly 3 times higher on desktop vs smartphone.

Here are the tabulated figures: