The report indicates that in the UK users are nearly twice as likely to browse a site via a tablet rather than their smartphone. This is particularly true of ecommerce activities which matches with the general consensus that consumers are actively using their tablet devices at home in the evening when they make decisions about travel, utilities and large consumer purchases like white goods, technology etc.
For the SME brand this comes as a shock as all the advice has been about mobile meaning smartphone. Unfortunately mobile sites do not render well on tablet devices, even the smaller Nexus and ipad mini don’t optimise well and so the decision comes as to whether or not to develop a tablet specific site.
Before making this decision a number of other issues need to be tackled. As there are a variety of sized devices on the market how do you manage all of them and is the content requirement the same as either desktop or smartphone?
The past educates us about the future and we can therefore assume that more devices with different resolutions will come to market and so chasing the trend is a fool’s errant. The answer is to build the whole site responsively therefore presenting a site to which every device views it in the most optimised manner. This may seem like a large cost to bear however it is an investment for the future and should mean that for the coming years your site will match with the changing devices accessing the web.
The current use of smartphones, tablets and desktops can be generally summed up as smartphone in the morning and evening as part of the commute, desktop at work, school, university and then tablet in the evening, potentially in-conjunction with other devices including T.V.
Each device fits a task so in the morning we are looking for news and social interaction, evening we are looking to shop and find information on hobbies etc. It is therefore critical that a business understands where they fit in this cycle and develop content to fit.
So if you’re an online retailer with products on the high street then you need all 3 options, niche e-tailer then desktop and tablet and a local restaurant mobile.
For more details about how your PPC is being affected by changing consumer patterns in this area, and further reasons why you need a minimum of a tablet and desktop site, read our recent blog on PPC.
