300% increases in mobile web traffic spelled disaster for CouponMint.com.
Year over year mobile traffic to CouponMint.com spelled complete failure. In assessing analytics over a period of months, it was determined that mobile traffic to CouponMint.com was up 308% from August 2010 to August 2011. Initially this was viewed as an extremely positive development and observation.
Cisco published a report in February 2011 with these highlights. From its Executive Summary – The Mobile Network in 2010 and 2011
Global mobile data traffic grew 2.6-fold in 2010, nearly tripling for the third year in a row.
The 2010 mobile data traffic growth rate was higher than anticipated. Last year’s forecast projected that the growth rate would be 149 percent. This year’s estimate is that global mobile data traffic grew 159 percent in 2010.
Last year’s mobile data traffic was three times the size of the entire global Internet in 2000.
Global mobile data traffic in 2010 (237 petabytes per month) was over three times greater than the total global Internet traffic in 2000 (75 petabytes per month).
Mobile video traffic will exceed 50 percent for the first time in 2011.
Mobile video traffic was 49.8 percent of total mobile data traffic at the end of 2010, and will account for 52.8 percent of traffic by the end of 2011.
Mobile network connection speeds doubled in 2010.
Globally, the average mobile network downstream speed in 2010 was 215 kilobits per second (kbps), up from 101 kbps in 2009. The average mobile network connection speed for smartphones in 2010 was 1040 kbps, up from 625 kbps in 2009.
Average smartphone usage doubled in 2010.
The average amount of traffic per smartphone in 2010 was 79 MB per month, up from 35 MB per month in 2009.
Smartphones represent only 13 percent of total global handsets in use today, but they represent over 78 percent of total global handset traffic.
In 2010, the typical smartphone generated 24 times more mobile data traffic (79 MB per month) than the typical basic-feature cell phone (which generated only 3.3 MB per month of mobile data traffic).
Android approaches iPhone levels of data use.
At the beginning of the year, iPhone consumption was at least 4 times higher than that of any other smartphone platform. Toward the end of the year, iPhone consumption was only 1.75 times higher than that of the second-highest platform, Android.
Nonsmartphone usage increased 2.2-fold to 3.3 MB per month in 2010, compared to 1.5 MB per month in 2009.
Basic handsets still make up the vast majority of devices on the network (87 percent).
There are 48 million people in the world who have mobile phones, even though they do not have electricity at home.
The mobile network has extended beyond the boundaries of the power grid.
Year in Review: Mobile Data Traffic Nearly Tripled in 2010
Global mobile data traffic nearly tripled (2.6-fold growth) in 2010, for the third year in a row. It is a testament to the momentum of the mobile industry that this growth persisted despite the continued economic downturn, the introduction of tiered mobile data packages, and an increase in the amount of mobile traffic offloaded to the fixed network.
All of this serves to confirm what most of you know. Mobile traffic to the web is exploding. Mobile traffic to your site is on the rise. If you haven’t optimized your site for those visitors, let me explain what will happen. You will lose customers. You will lose sales. You will lose long term visitors and relationships for your business. It’s a guarantee. I promise.
As visitors continued to muscle their way into the previous CouponMint.com web site, they were confronted with every conceivable barrier to having a worthwhile mobile experience. As traffic to the site increased via mobile every month, every measurement of engagement was trending down.
What are those key measurements?
Time on site – CouponMint.com’s visitors continued to spend less time on site as they struggled and fought to navigate a site that wasn’t optimized for their visit.
Page views – Page views, that raw count of the number of pages that each visitor visits through the course of their time on site, were trending down in the face of increasing traffic. NOT good.
Bounce rates – Bounce rates describing how quickly someone bails on your site upon their finding it. This number was trending up. This tells us that the experience mobile we visitors were having prompted them to exit the site at increasingly higher speeds, a higher percentage were leaving immediately upon finding the site.
With a 300% increase in mobile traffic and a 60% increase in Unique Visitors we saw every reason to be positive about the brand, the mission, the presence, and the trends associated with CouponMint.com. What was needed was a new web platform that was optimized for mobile. Coupon Mint needed a site that was built specifically for mobile, rendering the site quickly, with the ability to perform a significant number of the site functions. In addition, the site had to be customized for its core business, the aggregation and distribution of coupons from its current list of 500 advertisers.
Coupon Mint wanted some additional features on its mobile ready platform. Those included the ability for users to store their coupons in an online wallet so to speak. They wanted the user to be able to search areas, industries, and categories within that industry easily and quickly. They wanted to also afford participating advertisers a value proposition that included a place to include their deals, showcase their branding, provide for social sharing, i.e. Facebook, Twitter, etc, and also to gather their own email opt-ins and text subscribers.
With some considerable time spent in development, programming, and implementation, the first version of the newly launched mobile ready platform has been successfully launched. Within one full week, CouponMint.com has experience 22,000 plus impressions on the site. Coupons are being found, printed, and merchants are experiencing business.
Recognizing mobile trends isn’t rocket science. Strategically implementing the site and then building value for advertisers and visitors, well, that’s where the science comes into play. Coupon Mint Magazine’s new web presence may be found at http://couponmint.com. The platform allows for a web presence for all of Coupon Mint Magazine’s paid print customers. These publications are currently shipped to 370,000 Mid State residences four times a year. The site has also been opened up to all area and regional businesses for a nominal monthly fee. This package allows for marketing functionality not seen in traditional web sites in addition to allowing participating advertisers to piggy back off of the Coupon Mint brand and aggregate search engine traffic.
Sherman Mohr is CMO of GoLoco Media Group, Inc. He serves as part strategists, implementer, cheerleader for the team, and company brand ambassador. You may email him at sherman at golocomedia dot com.
