Why It’s Crucial to Monitor and Test for Mobile First

by | December 6, 2016

Mobile First

If your business isn’t primarily focusing on its mobile platforms for monitoring and load testing, you could be missing out on incredible business opportunities. Did you know that Black Friday 2016 marked the first time mobile device users spent more than 1 billion dollars on this “shopping holiday”? These kind of numbers are far too big to ignore.

As we’ve mentioned before, your company could quickly lose potential customers if your platform can’t keep up with demand. It’s likely that more and more potential customers are interacting with your company’s mobile apps and mobile site sooner and more often than your desktop platform–so give it the testing treatment it’s due.

Mobile Is the New Normal

As of 2016, the typical American splits daily Internet time at 50 minutes on desktop sites and just under 150 minutes on mobile devices. Additionally, 87 percent of smartphone users have their device with them at all times. The number of worldwide smartphone users hit 2.6 billion in 2015 and is expected to grow to 6.1 billion by 2020.

The mobile web isn’t up-and-coming anymore: It’s here. If your business didn’t shift its focus to mobile in mid-2014 when mobile platforms reached 60 percent of all online digital media engagement, you’re unfortunately behind the curve.

2015 was a big year for mobile as well:

While customers complete a larger share of purchases on desktop platforms, online purchases are trending towards the mobile platform as well. As of 2016, 45 percent of all shopping includes some sort of mobile-device-based interaction. In addition, mobile purchasing expanded to a 40 percent share of all online spending in 2015 and is expected to surpass 70 percent in 2017.

Mobile Performance

Fast mobile load times are essential: 46 percent of users say they will abandon a page if it takes more than 10 seconds to load. Additionally, every 100ms of extra load time on a page equates to a 1 percent drop in sales, and decreasing load times from 15 seconds to 2 seconds can increase conversions by 30 percent. Performance is essential to completing transactions: 61 percent of users won’t return to a site with problematic access, and two-thirds of those lost customers will visit a competing platform instead. Load testing and web monitoring are your business’s best defense against poor performance hurting your bottom line.

Mobile Sites vs. Mobile Apps

While mobile applications work well for regular customers, mobile sites are more effective for reaching out to infrequent and new customers–largely due to the perceived inconvenience of installing an app to make a purchase. In fact, 48 percent of customers start product research with a mobile search, with 33 percent going directly to a website, and 26 percent starting with the branded app. Because so few visitors start with the app, it’s important that customers can complete a transaction through the mobile site itself. The relationship between the two platforms is a key ingredient to success.

Don’t Neglect Desktop or the Staff/Desktop Disconnect

Facebook’s study on omnichannel shoppers found that customers often use both platforms for researching and purchasing proucts. Desktop is still important; it’s just that mobile devices and desktop systems have traded positions in terms of primary and secondary use. Though all online traffic growth is coming from mobile devices, 35 percent of traffic still comes from desktops.

If your business is looking to get better performance out of its mobile platforms through load testing and monitoring, contact the experts at Apica today.