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Mobile dominates traffic but desktop dominates revenue [#ChartoftheDay]

Author's avatar By Robert Allen 17 Oct, 2016
Essential Essential topic

Users are changing devices across the customer journey - marketers need to recognise this.

Mobile, mobile, mobile. It's all about mobile. Be mobile first. Do everything mobile first. That's pretty much what you hear from eCommerce or search thought leaders these days.

In fairness, they do have a point. Not only do mobile sessions now outstrip desktop sessions across the web, but they do so by a big margin on eCommerce sites. 59% of sessions on eCommerce sites are on some form of mobile device, according to a study of 87 million web sessions by Wolfgang digital.

But the picture isn't that simple. When it comes to revenue by device, it's actually desktop that still dominates. A massive 63% of revenue comes desktop, 3 times what comes from Smartphones.

So can eCommerce marketers breath a sigh of relief and stop worrying about those pesky mobile visitors that they've always struggled to engage with? - Sorry, but no.

Marketers need to top thinking in terms of mobile users and desktop users being separate people. A single user will own several devices, and will browse and make the decision to purchase on a mobile device, and then switch to desktop to carry out the purchase.

The area of focus should thus be ensuring a smooth experience across devices, and helping customers to quickly return to products they've previously displayed interest in.

mobile-ecommerce-traffic-desktop-revenue

Author's avatar

By Robert Allen

Rob Allen is Marketing Manager for Numiko, a digital agency that design and build websites for purpose driven organisations, such as the Science Museum Group, Cancer Research UK, University of London and the Electoral Commission. Rob was blog editor at Smart Insights from 2015-2017. You can follow Rob on LinkedIn.

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