Use of mobile devices is becoming ubiquitous throughout the world and the BVI is no exception. However, are the people that market their businesses online here adapting to the shifting sands; are they optimizing their web sites for the new mobile world? If not, these figures suggest that they should.
Some interesting stats on one of our web sites prompted us to review the tablet/mobile (non-desktop) visits on the sites that we manage. We reviewed the stats for the period January – August (Q1-Q3); year-on-year non-desktop visits have grown by 62% and represent 21.9% of all site visits versus 14.5% for the same period last year.
There has been a slight increase in mobile usage over tablet usage with 40% of visits from mobile users this year against 38% last year.
BVI-Focused Sites
If we strip out sites that actively market to oversea visitors and focus on sites that specifically market to a BVI audience*, the growth is even greater. Non-desktop visits have grown by 66.5% and represent 14% of visits. For the same period last year it was 8.7%.
Interestingly, visits from mobile devices saw a growth of 87% and represents a larger proportion of non-desktop visits at 48%, versus 52% on tablets. It was 42%/58% last year. Tablet use grew by 51%.
BVI versus USA
While the BVI is seeing marked growth with similar figures to elsewhere, mobile usage is still lagging behind the rest of the world.
In the USA, a third of website traffic now comes from mobile devices, up 73 percent from a year ago, according to the Walker Sands Quarterly Mobile Traffic Report for Q2 2013.
Walker Sands, a public relations and digital agency for B2B and technology companies, found that 29 percent of client website traffic came from mobile devices (mobile and tablet) in the second quarter of 2013, up 73 percent since the same period last year and 244 percent since 2011.
Mobile Friendly Sites
We are currently transitioning all our clients (and our web sites) to mobile-friendly web sites, here are a few examples. Some are fully responsive, others are redirecting to mobile versions of the main site:
www.bradswordpr.com
www.broadswordcommunications.com
www.cocomayarestaurant.com
www.infinite-solutions.biz
www.caribbeanregatta.com
www.bvihurricane.com
www.bvisup.co
www.topofthebaths.com
* These sites still receive non-BVI visitors but we haven’t removed these visits from these stats.
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