- The average reported share of traffic via mobile phones on institutional websites doubled in a year from 4.6% in 2011 to 9.3% in 2012.
- The average reported share of traffic via tablets on college websites went from 0.5% in 2011 to 3% in 2012.
- 71% of the surveyed institutions reported mobile traffic shares ranging from 6% to 11%
– Karine Joly, collegewebeditor.com
Karine previewed results from her annual State of the Mobile & Responsive Web in Higher Ed Survey (a full report is anticipated next week).
The increasing trend of visitors to websites using mobile devices seems accurate. Though, the overall numbers reported seem low to me (a double diget percentage for mobile traffic share is more in line with what I would expect to see). Karen noted a drop in the number of responses to the survey this year (so, maybe there is some survey bias).
Either way, it’s worthwhile to regularly make time to observe changes in the habits and behaviors of visitors to your website. Insights gathered can help you to evaluate the effectiveness of your digital strategy and tactics. I believe that most digital professionals would agree that ignoring mobile when developing new marketing communications would be a terrible mistake for most projects at this point in time.
Michael,
I don’t think that the lower participation can explain anything on this part of the survey. It was only included this year.
148 institutions submitted data for this specific section (174 for the rest of the survey). The reported average is an average, so at 9.3% for the entire year of 2012, it is very close to your 2-digit assumption 🙂
The rest of the data to be published next week confirmed that higher ed reached a tipping point over the past 12 months.
Thanks for the heads up Karine.
I think it would be really interesting to also look at these data sets from the perspective of total percentage of mobile visits for specific parts/areas within .edu websites (e.g., a brand story, a campaign site, news, admissions, etc.).
Also, seeing what the percentage of mobile visits was for highly valued referring sources. For example, if a campaign targeted generating visits from Twitter or Facebook — what percentage of those visitors were mobile (and how do these numbers compare to the overall numbers/ratios reported).
I can’t wait to read the full report. Thanks for the comment and all the work you do in the higher education and marketing space. 🙂