I’ve been keeping an eye on our mobile traffic for a few months now. This week it crossed 8% of sessions. That doesn’t sound like much, but six months ago it was barely 4%.
The interesting part isn’t the growth rate. It’s what I found when I actually looked at the device breakdown.
I assumed iPhone. Everyone’s talking about iPhone. The iPhone 4 launched in June and the tech press hasn’t shut up about it since. So I expected to see a sea of Safari on iOS.
Instead, BlackBerry.
BlackBerry is our biggest mobile segment by a comfortable margin. Nokia second. iPhone third. This feels wrong - everyone I know either has an iPhone or wants one - but the data doesn’t lie.
I mentioned this to a colleague and got a shrug. “BlackBerry users don’t go out.” Which is both dismissive and possibly true. We don’t actually know what mobile users want from a listings site, or when they’re looking. Are they planning their evening on the commute? Checking opening times while standing outside a venue? The analytics can tell me they visited. It can’t tell me why or where.
The site works on mobile. Sort of. You can pinch and zoom your way around. But it’s not designed for it. Nobody’s site is, really. Some of the bigger players have apps - separate downloads, separate codebases, separate update cycles. Building an app means picking a platform, and the data says BlackBerry but my gut says that’s not where this is heading.
So I’m watching a number grow and I don’t have a clear playbook for what to do about it. Mobile is obviously becoming important. The question is whether “obviously important” translates to “worth significant investment” when it’s still under 10% of traffic.
I suspect I’ll look back on this period and either think “we should have moved faster” or “good thing we didn’t overreact.” No way to know which yet.
And if you’re in the market for a new smartphone, check out Deals on 3 - a site I run with a mate. We’re doing alright on it, actually.