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How Much Mobile Traffic is a Site Getting?

by Stewart Alexander
9 replies
I've just started out marketing mobile websites and text messaging campaigns to local businesses.

One of the objections I came accross today, was "Just how many people are searching for my products and services on their mobile phones?"

Valid question.

Now I know installing Google Analytics to your clients site would be a solution, but its not always the case that you have access to do this, especially if its a cold contact.

What I'd like to know is...

Is there a way to tell how much mobile traffic is getting and what search terms are being used?

Ideally, I would love to be able to do the following;

1. Pick a website as a potential client
2. perform a search for how much mobile traffic they are receiving.
3. Pull a report and place the data in a pdf, excel , word doc etc.
4. Use the data as leverage when contacting the client(s)

So basically, I'd like to say, Dear business owner, your site is not mobile friendly. Here's the amount of people searching for your products/services via their mobile phones, and here are the search terms they are using. And because your site is not mobile friendly, you are most likely losing these potential clients... bla bla and so forth...

Main thing is, the ability to be able to perform keyword research on any given website, without having to install tracking scripts.

Is something like this out there?

Thanks

Stewart
#mobile #site #traffic
  • Profile picture of the author jsherloc
    Very good question Stewart. As far as I know, there is nothing out there that address the mobile-site tracking. I could be wrong though. A bit of a stretch, but you could probably run an adwords campaign using the normal geo-keywords, and then set it to ONLY mobile ads. Bid for page 1, count the impressions for a week, etc. I'm honestly not sure that you can even do this within Adwords though, as I've never tried to target ONLY mobile, no search or no display network, etc.

    On a related note, how are you finding the general "interest" levels in mobile marketing on your side of the pond? As an online marketer, I am well aware that mobile marketing is HUGE right now, and will probably produce the next BIG company in the next year or so. BUT, there is a HUGE void in what we online marketers know/believe, and what your main street business owners know and believe about the potential of mobile marketing.

    I have noticed that it seems like just recently, in the past few years, MOST businesses are finally coming around that they at the very least need some type of web presence. It has taken them a long time to even reach this point. It makes me wonder how long it will take THE MAJORITY of biz owners to see the value in mobile marketing. Regardless, I'd have a hard time pitching this type of service as a stand-alone as well, but I can see it being valuable as an add-on to other marketing services for companies...

    - Jim
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    • Profile picture of the author Stewart Alexander
      Thanks for the reply Jim.

      There are plenty of mobile traffic tracking tools out there on the client server side... google Analytics to mention one. but I can't find any solutions that enables a marketer to perform searches and produce search results on any given site. This would be powerful information to have in the hand when finding out if a client is a match for your services.

      As far as mobile marketing goes over here, my personal experince is finding me doing quite a lot of awareness raising first. business owners (for the most) have not even thought about mobile marketing, but find it highyly interesting once I show them their website on a mobile phone.

      That's why having the search data would be great. First I'd show them how bad their site looks on a mobile, then hit them with the number of searches being performed.

      I find presenting mobile as a standalone works in terms of getting people to listen to you more than offering the seo services that they hear almost everyday. I'm focussing on low entry point mobile friendly sites, then offering upsells for seo and so on. This way has more impact because of the visual aspect you can bring to the table.

      Hope that helps.

      Stewart
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      • Profile picture of the author Pete Egeler
        Stewart,

        Google AdSense CAN be set up for mobile only publishing. You can go to your AdSense account and read all about it.

        It sure shouldn't take you long to get some figures by setting up a campaign aimed at the mobile market only. In fact, you might consider taking a current campaign you may be running, and set up another one just like it, but going mobile broadcast only.

        Pete
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        The special sale is over. No longer able to remain acitive. Domain is for sale if interested.
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        • Profile picture of the author Stewart Alexander
          Thanks Pete,

          That sounds like a good solution for your own sites.

          Looks like there's potential for a product here. Surely its possible to have a tool where you enter in the domain url and tell it to scrape the mobile search results?

          When I sell mobile sites to clients, I simply show them what their current site looks like on my mobile phone. This often has an impact, but just imagine if you were able to say, and here's the amount of searches and the keyword phrases.
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          • Profile picture of the author TE2
            Originally Posted by Stewart Alexander View Post

            Thanks Pete,

            That sounds like a good solution for your own sites.

            Looks like there's potential for a product here. Surely its possible to have a tool where you enter in the domain url and tell it to scrape the mobile search results?

            When I sell mobile sites to clients, I simply show them what their current site looks like on my mobile phone. This often has an impact, but just imagine if you were able to say, and here's the amount of searches and the keyword phrases.
            I forgot to mention that showing them their site on a mobile device is very powerful. Especially for an ecommerce site. Have them try to navigate their site. They will hate it.

            Then show them an example of a mobile site that works.

            Very powerful.

            John
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  • Profile picture of the author Pete Egeler
    Stewart,

    At this point, I'm like everyone else. Don't know of anything available to us that tracks mobile only. So, I guess just a "test" run using mobile only would be the only way we could come close to getting any figures.

    Pete
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    • Profile picture of the author TE2
      Stewart.

      The only way to really tell is using web analytics and a complete mechanism for tracking sales conversions.

      I have a client ($10M/year in ecommerce) that saw a huge shift in mobile visitors beginning earlier this year. Sales conversions started to decline but more traffic was hitting the site. Analysis showed a ~60% change toward mobile traffic (based on browser type) over a two month period.

      A mobile optimized site (mobile.main-domain.com) was quickly created and without any promotion (just putting it live), they saw a 3% increase in mobile sales on the first day. Up 6% by the second week and the trend has continued upward for mobile traffic and sales conversions.

      I am plugged in to the industry via contacts and trade publications and "m-commerce", as they call it, is the talk of 2010 and beyond.

      So what can you do?

      Plan A - Get access to the clients web analytics (google analytics, Omniture, CoreMetrics, etc...) if possible and show them the reality using their own data.

      Note: the industry and target demographics will have a huge impact. My client sells women's shoes to 16-35 year old females and that group is a heavy user of mobile.

      If you can't do that...

      Plan B - Do some research that shows the industry trends and publish a presentation or free report on it to educate prospects

      Or better yet...

      Plan C - which is Plan A and Plan B combined - the ole' one-two punch!

      Regards,

      John

      ps - There is money in mobile sites. The price tag for this clients mobile ecommerce site was $50K.
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      • Profile picture of the author mobilemarketing247
        Hi Stewart, hopefully this will help a bit. If you log into your cpanel and look at your browser stats you should be able to glean by percentage the number if visitors arriving via mobile Nokia or Samsung (PDA/Phone browsers) to name a few.
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        • Profile picture of the author TJ Kazunga
          My experience is that selling them on traffic is the wrong move. Having said that, I've looked at GA for my client's sites and ALL of them show mobile traffic in the 2-10% range.

          Rather, I find what works is to talk of
          a. positioning - the coming wave. Is your business gonna be slow on the uptake
          b. user experience - don't you owe it to all your visitors to give them a pleasant experience on your website
          c. branding -one bad experience can lose you goodwill
          d. stats - lots of impressive stats around growth of mobile.
          e. first mover advantage. do it now when it's still empty. Not in 5 years when its hellishly competitive.

          In the last month I've had 10 companies agree to a mobile website, just using the above.

          Cheers
          TJ
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