The growing importance of responsive website design (RWD) is also highlighted, with responsive sites attracting an average of 48.5% mobile traffic, while non mobile-friendly sites average 42.7%. Nucleus analysts believe that Google’s labelling of mobile-friendly sites is reinforcing this shift, yet Akamai reported just 20% of ‘top tier’websites used responsive web design in 2014.
Surprisingly, brands with adaptive mobile sites – separate sites edited for smartphone users – appear to lag further behind with just 36.7% mobile traffic.
Average mobile traffic accross all 12 sites – and a sample of 1.8m users – is now 44.6%, up 15.05% year-on-year but slowing to 3.9% since June 2014, still on-track to breach the 50% threshold this year.
Several luxury brands are already attracting more mobile than desktop users, with the top site in the survey reporting 54.7% mobile traffic. The most popular device on this 5 star site is the iPhone, whose browsing and booking performance has been improved thanks to the larger screened iPhone 6 and 6+. Luxury brands should ignore this phenomenon at their peril.
Apple retains a 77.14% share of mobile OS, down from 77.92% last June, while Android is flat at 19.5%, down from 19.63% six months earlier. Windows Mobile OS is eking out a distant third position, seemingly on the back of business users.
In terms of mobile transactions, the survey confirmed Criteo’s State of Mobile Commerce findings for Q4 2014 with mobile booking values approaching and, in the case of tablets, exceeding desktop transaction values.
For brands still unable to deliver a seamless mobile experience to increasingly mobile consumers, another wave of digital transformation is urgently required...
For information about Nucleus’ brand, digital and responsive design services, read our approach to digital design.
Peter Matthews
Nucleus Founder & CEO
February 2015
Agree? Disagree?
Share your views by emailing enquiries@nucleus.co.uk