You know that mobile visitors comprise a significant percentage of your overall site visits; but do you understand how these visitors are finding and using your site? Do you track the differences in behavior and conversions between your mobile and desktop visitors?
More than ever before, understanding your audience’s mobile usage is critical to the success of your business. Earlier this year, Google stated that there are now more searches on mobile than on desktop; and according to ComScore, the majority of digital media is now consumed via mobile apps.
This article will show you where to look in Google Analytics to find out specifically how your mobile users are accessing your content. I’ll also briefly cover how you can track your audience’s usage when accessing your mobile app or your dedicated mobile site.
1. Track how many visitors access your site from mobile, desktop or tablets: Audience / Mobile / Overview
If you have a responsive site (meaning you don’t have a separate mobile app or dedicated mobile site), you’ll need to track your mobile metrics within Google Analytics. You’ll want to start by seeing a basic overview of how many of your visitors are accessing your site through mobile, desktop or tablet.
In the screenshot above, you can see that this site receives almost 75% of its traffic from mobile. Other interesting metrics: Bounce rates are significantly higher among desktop users, and tablet users tend to stay on the site almost twice as long as desktop or mobile users.
2. Track which specific mobile devices your audience is using: Audience / Mobile / Devices
This report will show you which specific mobile devices your audience is using. Being the most popular mobile devices, Apple’s iPhone and iPad will likely dominate this report.
This is important data to have on hand if you’re considering developing a mobile app; you’re most likely to achieve success for your app if know which devices your audience prefers.
3. See which screen sizes your audience is viewing your site on: Audience / Overview / Screen Resolution
This metric isn’t accessible directly from your Analytics sidebar. To see which screen sizes your audience is using, go to Audience, Overview, then scroll down to the bottom of the page where it says Screen Resolution.
You can now see which screen sizes are most commonly used to access your site. From looking at the above report, you can see the most common size is 320x568. A quick Google search reveals that this is the iPhone 5; this corresponds with what we learned earlier about the most common devices our audience is using.
4. Track conversions by device
This report shows you how each device – desktop, mobile and tablet – is performing in terms of conversions. As you can see from the screenshot above, nearly half of all conversions are from mobile devices. Considering that nearly 75% of all traffic for this site is from mobile, we would expect the conversion percentage to be higher. This may signal an issue with the user experience we’re providing for our mobile visitors.
5. Track conversions by screen resolution
Using the custom report mentioned in #5, we can drill down even further to see which mobile screen sizes are resulting in the highest conversions. Click on ‘mobile’ in the custom report to see a complete breakdown.
As you can see in the screenshot above, the highest conversions are from screen sizes of 320x480 and 360x640.
6. See how your mobile usage stacks up against similar sites: Audience / Benchmarking / Devices
This report lets you track how your site is performing on various devices compared to similar websites in your industry vertical.
As you can see in the screenshot above, this site is getting much more mobile traffic than sites with a similar number of daily sessions. It is also getting more traffic from tablets. Desktop traffic is 57% lower than other similar sites in this industry.
Moving to the far right of the screenshot, we can see that this site is performing better than similar sites in terms of both pages per session and bounce rate; however, average session duration is a fair bit lower for this site, particularly for desktop visitors.
7. Google Analytics for your mobile App
If you have a separate mobile app for your business, you’ll be able to view all relevant metrics via Google Analytics for mobile apps. This will allow you to access the same data you do for your desktop or dedicated mobile site, including acquisition, audience and behavior. You will also be able to track in-app conversions.
You can set up and track goal conversions, or use segmentation to find out exactly how certain groups of mobile users are accessing and navigating through your site. Google Analytics is available for both Android and iOS apps. To find out more about setting up GA for your mobile app, see Google’s Mobile App Analytics help page.
8. Track standard metrics for your dedicated mobile site within Google Analytics
If you have a separate mobile site, you can track all the standard metrics using Google Analytics. You’ll want to track and measure how all aspects of your site are performing among your mobile visitors, just like you do with your desktop visitors. These metrics include (but are not limited to):
- Pageviews
- Top landing pages
- Bounce rates
- Top exit pages (can indicate a problem with user experience)
- Traffic sources
As you track these metrics, compare them to how your desktop site and content are performing. Are certain topics of more interest to your mobile audience? Are your mobile visitors looking for different information, or are they behaving differently while on your site than your desktop visitors? Use this information to improve the content and user experience of your dedicated mobile site.
Conclusion
It’s no longer enough to simply track what your desktop visitors are doing on your site, and assume your mobile visitors are following suit. Your mobile audience could very well be finding and using your site in a completely different way; and if you’re not tracking mobile audience usage, you may never fully understand how.
Do you track mobile audience usage on your site? Are there any other metrics, reports or tools you use to track how your mobile visitors are using your site?
