Mobile Plone

A colleague sent me an article on mobile computing this afternoon and among other things, it inspired me to take a look at what's shaking with Plone and mobile devices.  Google Analytics for the past five months has been tracking mobile device stats.  You can find it under Visitors | Mobile | Mobile Devices.

Using Plone.org as an exemplar, Analytics tells us that less than 1% of visitors are using a mobile device.  Conveniently, Analytics breaks this down by operating system. Looks like iPhone is the clear winner at the moment, even with the small sample size. 

iPhone	65%
Android	10%
iPod	10%
SymbianOS	8%
BlackBerry	2%
Other	5%

One can also group by browser and here Safari comes in with a resounding 80% followed by a weak 13% for Mozilla Compatible Agents.  NetFront has 1% while Opera, IE, BlackBerry and the rest trickle in at less than 0.8% each. 

The mobile usage statistics are quite different from our average Plone.org visitor.  Pages per mobile visit average 2.5 while the site average is 4.4.  Average mobile time on site is 2 minutes vs 4.5 for the overall average.  Mobile users are not going deeply into the site and leaving quickly.  Looks like some refactoring for mobile would be helpful to this small but growing population of site users. 

There is a barely perceptible upward trend in mobile visitors over the five months for which we have data.  The daily stats are very noisy with lots of variability from day to day.  I'll continue to track this over time and see where it leads. 

Meanwhile, be thinking about your own sites and how users with mobile devices are experiencing them.  Give some thought to Jakob Nielen's remarks on mobile usability.  Mobile devices are set to become the dominant means by which a huge chunk of the world's population are getting to the Web.  Don't leave them out.