According to web analytics data from a broad range of our local TriCities clients, mobile web usage nearly doubled in the past 12 months from 8% to 15%.
As an Inbound Marketing and web design firm serving Johnson City, Kingsport, and Bristol, TN, we compile web stats for small business websites in the area and tracked the percentage increase in mobile usage from October 2011 through September 2012. The types of businesses in the study included industrial, professional services, financial planning, retail, and tourism.
It may be noted that mobile usage dropped during the winter months, January through March, and that may be due the fact that more TriCities residents stay indoors and in front of desktop devices during inclement weather.
For each business, the percentage depended largely on the demographics of the business’s targeted market, but the upward trend we saw was consistent. For instance, travel-related sites saw much higher mobile usage than did financial planning.
The data we analyzed showed a sharper upward curve and slightly higher mobile usage compared with broader trends. In May of this year, TheNextWeb reported that mobile accounted for 10% of internet usage worldwide. Mobile access of TriCities small business websites in the same period was at 14%. And while it took 2 years (2010 to 2012) for mobile usage to double worldwide, the percentage doubled in the TriCities in just 12 months.
The Future: Mobile Responsive
Web designers are moving more and more to “mobile responsive” designs to accommodate the increase in mobile internet usage. Mobile Responsive sites have architecture built into their designs which automatically reformat to fit the device’s browser size. Reformatting to a mobile device can be in the form of menu collapses into a single dropdown, removal of videos or images, text size changes, etc.
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