In this article, I will provide five practical steps for marketers to understand the multi-device Web through mobile analytics tools to drive a better understanding of their customers.
1. Go back to basics
Regardless of whether you have a dedicated mobile site, a responsive web design, a desktop only site or a mixture, you need to understand the devices your customers are using to access your website. This can be something as simple as a report showing how the volume of traffic changes across a period of time by device group. Do iPhone customers prefer your site on a morning during their commute, or are tablet devices the most popular device for your customers? These two simple figures can tell you a lot about your content and the experience you are giving your customers. And don't stop at desktop/ tablet/smartphone - given significant impact on behaviour that device type has, it makes more sense to go just one stage more granular and add categories such as phablet, feature phone, smart TV and ‘other'. Some of these categories will be very small today, but start tracking now and you'll get early indicators of which areas to watch. It's better the devil you know.
- Measure KPIs on mobile device type
Most businesses already measure things like bounce rate, time on site and one or more conversion ‘goals', and at present you probably look at lead source as the main filter. By adding the above device type filter to these existing KPIs you'll get immediate insight into behaviour variations. Our clients see that visitors on different device types have markedly different behaviour patterns, whether it's longer time on site from tablet visitors, or more customers using the "search" feature on smaller screens whereas large screen users tend to browse through product lists. Is your site content and experience optimised for the different device types?
- Responsive Web Design needs to be properly assessed
There has been a huge wave of excitement around Responsive Web Design, however, the truth is it is not a simple fix-everything solution for the mobile web. Many companies see poorer than expected KPI results after their RWD site launch, or worse, an actual drop-off in conversions vs the previous site. This is not to say RWD doesn't have a role, but more that the multi-device world has become an even more complex place. Mobile analytics can help marketers identify what's working well and what's not on a responsive site. For example, post-launch, are their device categories that are underperforming, do certain content types appear to deliver worse than expected results? If your web analytics tools just scratch the surface of multi-device then you're not getting the insight you need into site performance and the investment in RWD will not deliver maximum return.
- Bandwidth must be considered and measured
For customers, speed is still king. Page load time is the single most important factor for visitors to a site and bandwidth quality. Mobile analytics enables marketers to filter traffic based on simple groupings such as fast, medium and slow connectivity. Running traffic volume and web KPI reports with this additional filter will reveal further insights. On which of your pages do slow connection visitors show more patience, on which do they give up most quickly; at what stage in your conversion funnel does slow bandwidth finally take its toll and cause the visitor to abandon and for the faster connecting visitors, could you make the process even more slick, or add richer content to improve conversion rates?
- Understand mobile behaviour through user personas
An advanced step that many companies are now taking is to develop mobile personas. As users use different devices throughout the day, their tolerance for certain experiences may also change. Either by adding mobile device information to your existing personas or creating some simple personas based on visitor device and context, personas enable marketers to segment their audience based on variables that have an impact on behaviour. For example, combining time of day, device type and quality of connection, do different segments behave differently on your site? Do they have the same conversion, bounce, time on site and abandonment KPIs? If not, consider whether your content strategy aligns with these segments.
As customers become more complex in the way they engage with mobile, businesses need to become more sophisticated in the way they analyse the effectiveness of their content. If you're not analysing your customers based on the device they are using and the context they are using it in, you're not taking advantage of the full spectrum of data that can make your life easier and improve sales/engagement at the same time.
Netbiscuits Device Detection is part of The Vault - for more information, please visit: vault.netbiscuits.com
