Business Websites in Swindon Fail Mobile Friendly Test
The mobile market is taking off and we keep hearing about the latest new phones, but are local businesses keeping up?
We carried out a mobile friendly websites survey to find out, to our surprise we found that less than 5% of business websites in Swindon are mobile friendly.
Growth in Internet Access via Mobile Devices
Access by mobile devices doubled in 2011, according to a report on mobile devices reported by Computer World UK (link no longer available) traffic from mobiles jumped from 4.3 percent in January 2011 to 8.5 percent over the same period this year. In January 2010, the share was just 1.7 percent.
Growth in Mobile Revenue
Revenues from mobile devices are also rising, for example eBay expects to transact mobile volumes of about $10 billion this year, double 2011’s level, eBay users have already listed over 100 million items on its auction site using mobile devices.
How Many Websites are Mobile Friendly?
The Mobile Friendly Websites Survey survey covered 222 Swindon based business websites (mainly from IT and marketing sectors) as listed at OpenSwindon.co.uk, all the websites were working, but unfortuately very few of them were found to adjust to mobile devices.
Just 10, or less than 5% of those websites were mobile friendly with responsive designs, meaning they adjust automatically to screen size.
All the more suprising that 35% of the websites tested were in the IT and website design sector (78) , and a further 21% were in the marketing, advertising and design secotrs (48), one might presume that these firms should be at the leading edge of the shift to tablets and mobile devices.
Just a handful, precisely 5, were partially mobile friendly in that they displayed in a large format making it easier to read the text, but these websites couldn’t be classified as having responsive designs.
The testing was carried out on an Android HTC Wildfire mid September 2012.
Upgrade to a Mobile Friendly Website with Rubber Dragon
Our Mobile Friendly Websites Survey confirms similar results (though much better than 5 percent) undertaken by other organisations, according to zdnet.com, a poll of business owners (no longer available) from the US in May earlier this year found that only 26 percent had a mobile friendly website, even though 69 percent believed that mobile marketing would be critical to growth during the next five years.
Our Favourite Local Mobile Friendly Websites
A handful of local businesses have made the effort to go mobile friendly, amongst them these were our favourites.
Elevation Creative Studios (no longer available), Elliott Hire, modular space and secure storage solutions, Nett Sales Resource (no longer available) which has a diary type entry, worked great on Android, but didn’t work on an iPhone emulator, and Martin Wright Design.
Original 2021 Mobile Friendly Websites Survey Download Available on Request
If you’d like to see the original data, please contact us.
For an new mobile friendly website for your business, together with an easy to use content management system, social media integration and search optimisation features, contact us today!