Quantitative Proof that You Probably Don’t Need an iPhone App... Yet

It’s no secret that mobile browsing and smartphone platforms like the iPhone and Google’s Nexus One are having a significant impact on how we access the internet. As new browser technologies and platforms pop up frequently, we as strategists and web developers are constantly challenged to adopt new approaches and development practices. Of course, as these new technologies become available, we also field all sorts of questions about interfacing with them. While we are always enthusiastic about developing new and exciting products for our clients, if your traffic indicates that your audience won’t care… then why waste the money?

Then the iPad came out… and oh man did it kick up one hell of a debate in the development community. I won’t bore you with the details… but it got me thinking: what does the interactive landscape really look like for our clients? Are your visitors cool enough to be a Mac? Or are they throwing on their brown ties and blue blazers and rocking out with the PC clan? Or maybe they’re wearing something really cool that I don’t even know about…

So we dug deep into Google Analytics to find out. We took a look at mobile, browser and operating system trends over a six month period for 5 different clients in a myriad of industries. All 5 clients have a national presence and see fairly significant traffic. Here’s what we found:

Okay... so what does this all mean and why should you care? Clearly all trends point to an increase in mobile usage, a decrease in the use of Internet Explorer as a browser technology and an increase in Mac usage... even in the corporate space. However, it cannot be overstated that in all cases while slight changes (or in some cases major changes) have occurred, the prevailing technologies in which people access these websites are still heavily desktop or laptop based systems primarily using Microsoft products.

While mobile statistics are increasing at a fairly significant rate, we recommend that our clients 1) wade gently into those waters but 2) definitely get their feet wet. That iPhone application you keep talking about would be totally sweet to develop. But it requires that the user first download and install the application on a specific platform (iPhone or Blackberry or Andriod, etc…) and it is not a substitute for someone looking for your site via mobile search. We would first recommend that you put your money towards creating a mobile presence by developing a mobile optimized website. This is essentially a streamlined version of your site accessed through the browser on your smartphone.

From a web development standpoint, it is great to see browser choices swing away from Internet Explorer (you can read an ongoing rant here). But even in the most anti-Microsoft cases (cases 4 and 5), IE still accounts for 50% of traffic to these sites. For the layman, this has a multitude of implications. Even IE8 (the most recent version of the browser) has very limited support of CSS3 (it’s been around for a while) as well as HTML5… which essentially means we’re stuck developing sites using older methods to account for older and less progressive browser technologies. This increases the possibility for site issues across browsers. Plus, despite Steve Jobs’s claim that HTML5 is the future, you’re still going to be using good old Flash to view your videos… which means unless you use YouTube, or spend time encoding for mobile platforms, they won’t be popping up on an iPhone any time soon. And that fully Flash based web experience you’re so fond of… yeah… that won’t work either.

Finally, while it has no serious relevance (other than what I’ve outlined above) on how we develop sites, there are cultural and strategic implications when looking at the PC audience versus the Mac audience. It points to the fact that businesses and households still largely prefer to wear their blue blazers and brown ties to the World Wide Party. It also seems to indicate how and when people seem to use the internet. For sites whose demographics skew younger and are more family focused (cases 4 and 5), there is an obvious trend towards “cooler”, more progressive technologies. Context is everything and if your site’s audience follows this rule, then you really should be prepared to upgrade your mobile presence and website feature set quicker than say if you existed in a business to business demographic.