London, UK – Trovus, a leading provider in specialist intelligence services based on its website technology that builds profiles of visiting organisations, today revealed the results of its new annual ‘Trovus Mobile Benchmark Research’. Citing what it calls the ‘game-changing’ rise of mobile versus desktop traffic based on millions of website hits, the research encourages organisations to compare their websites against the benchmarks and evaluate their digital content distribution strategies in planning for a new era of customer intelligence and communications.
The new benchmark research analysed business-to-business (B2B) websites with an annual traffic of some 20 million hits, among major organisations across industries such as media, legal, financial services, technology, pharmaceutical and manufacturing. It found that already mobile devices account for 5.8% of traffic to the sites as they encroach on desktop traffic. IPads and iPhones dominate, accounting for a total share of 75% of all mobile traffic, with Android and other mobile devices lagging behind.
The research is the first of what will become an annual benchmarking survey to spotlight trends in support of customer intelligence, marketing and business development professionals charged with the task of developing company digital customer engagement strategies. It says that as people flock to mobile devices such as smartphones, iPad and Android tablets, mobile internet is set to take over desktop internet usage by 2014, with huge implications for the near future as online investments and plans are put into place.
Launching the research, Trovus CEO and Co-Founder Caspar Craven said: “We all know about the march of mobility but these results are still jaw dropping. They come from across many types of industry and from big Trovus customer organisations that are household names – not just in the UK but around the world. For me, the over-riding message is this: the results are clear, we need to look now at our digital communications investments and content distribution strategies – because the mobile future is already here.”
He continued: “The key to planning investments for the mobile future is to know how you compare against your peers – to benchmark activities. Our new research provides all the evidence needed to build business case, to pinpoint the benchmark facts and figures, to see what others are doing and to compare websites against the benchmark.”
The research cites a ‘revolution in iPad traffic’ since the launch of the iPad 4 in 2012, with figures showing iPads and iPhones currently dwarfing other mobile devices. Charting iPad and desktop usage, the research says that already almost as many people look at website pages using an iPad as those using a desktop.
In some weeks during 2012 the average number of pages visited over iPads overtook the number visited with desktops. In weeks 27 and 28, the average number of pages visited by iPad users hit 2.54 and 2.59, versus the desktop figure of 2.30 and 2.34, respectively. That greater engagement using tablets and smartphones even extends to corporate websites at weekends, says the research, where peak time for activity is between 9-10 pm.
Trovus’s Craven again: “There’s a real depth of engagement with iPads. People browse more on iPads whereas they tend to use smartphones for practical information, such as maps and phone numbers. IPads are to surf the internet. This couldn’t be more telling in our research and organisations need to be prepared and plan for this burgeoning trend with iPads … and tablets generally of course.”
There were substantial differences among the many B2B websites benchmarked, the research says, with some sites having twice the traffic of others from mobile devices. “Even so, the resounding take-away is that the digital and overall marketing strategy has a big impact on how customers react and the type of engagement you generate,” said Craven. “Having this research will help organisations to make decisions, especially as there are many competing potential initiatives and investments – such as mobile, automated marketing, more sales people, more events, social media and so on.”
The Trovus Mobile Benchmark Research – the first of Trovus’s annual benchmarking and trends surveys – is free of charge. The report is available at www.trovus.co.uk/b-report. Trovus is also running Benchmarking & Marketing Engagement Events for customer intelligence, marketing and business development professionals.
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