Mobile Usage Statistics with Voice

If your website isn’t 100% mobile compatiable you’re loosing users and clients. Mobile usage along with voice search is growing at a rate soon to pass desktop. Here are some statistics every online business should know:

1. How Many People Own Smartphones?

There are 3.5 billion mobile phone users worldwide

There are currently 3.6 billion smartphone users worldwide. (Statista, 2021)

Just five years ago in 2016, there were one billion fewer smartphone users. This is expected to rise to 3.8 billion by the end of 2021, marking a 52 percent increase in a relatively short period of five years.

2. Time Spent on Mobile Devices

Showing how much time adults spend on their smartphones

In 2019, the average US adult spent 3 hours and 43 minutes a day on mobile devices. That marked the first time that the time spent on mobile exceeded the time spent watching television, which came in at 3 hours and 35 minutes.

This divide widened over the next two years, with time spent on mobile devices forecast to hit just under four hours (3 hours and 54 minutes) by 2021, compared to 3 hours and 22 minutes of television time. 

3. People Using Phones for Product Research

People would rather use mobile phone for product research than talk to in-store staff.

Mobile usage statistics show that nearly seven out of ten internet users in the US say they would look for customer reviews on their phones while in-store before approaching an employee. (eMarketer, 2019)

58 % of them are also looking for other products similar to the ones they’re thinking about purchasing, and 55 percent are looking up product specifications.

Such mobile usage statistics highlight the importance of providing consumers with a positive mobile experience. We always keep this in mind when designing your ecommerce website and developing customer engagement strategies.

4. Mobile Shopping 

Not only are people using their mobile devices to do product research, but many of them are also using them to carry out purchases. 

More than half (51 percent) of internet users also use their mobile phones to purchase products online and  two out of every three (66 percent) say they use shopping apps on their mobile devices. (Datareportal, 2020)

Of all the internet users, those aged between 25 and 34 shop on their mobiles the most, with 57 percent of them having purchased a product online with their mobile phones in the past month. In comparison, less than one in three (30 percent) aged from 55 to 64 have done so.

With so many people doing mobile shopping, as an ecommerce business owner, you should consider prioritizing your mobile optimization strategy. This is especially since users who have come across a negative experience on a mobile website are a lot less likely to buy from that business.

5. The Option of Mobile Shopping

Given the ease and commodity of online shopping and the widespread use of mobile devices by consumers, many shoppers consider the lack of the option of mobile shopping to be a dealbreaker. 

Almost six out of every ten shoppers say that being able to purchase products on mobile devices is a key factor when it comes to choosing brands or retailers to buy from. (Google, 2019)

As we work on your online store, we focus on the mobile shopping aspect of it. It is important to make sure that the mobile shopping experience for your consumers is a seamless one. 

That means everything from optimizing your store elements (i.e. images, layout, call-to-action buttons, etc.) for an optimal mobile experience and ensuring short load times to offering a smooth checkout process and allowing multiple payment options. 

6. Mobile Device Statistics: Traffic

At the start of 2015, less than one-third (31.16 percent) of the global web traffic came from mobile devices. Less than five years later that number has skyrocketed to 52.6 percent, marking a 68.8 percent jump. (Statista, 2019)

In fact, for three years now, mobile traffic has consistently accounted for around 50 percent of the total website traffic worldwide. 

With 5G technology, which will bring about much quicker internet speeds and connections, we can expect mobile traffic to continue growing. Experts are also expecting mobile data traffic worldwide to increase five-fold by the end of 2024.

7. Mobile Time Spent With Digital Media

Smartphones currently account for 70 percent of the total digital media time in the US (Comscore, 2019). That’s a 22.8 percent increase from the 57 percent registered in 2017. 

It’s clear from these mobile statistics that smartphones are the most popular devices with which internet users consume digital media. Just 23 percent of US consumers’ time spent with digital media is done on the desktop, and that figure falls to seven percent for tablets.

8. Digital Ad Spend on Mobile

Digital ads exceeded that of traditional ads for the first time in 2019.

Mobile marketing statistics show that digital ad spend on mobile amounted to $87.06 billion 2019, which is more than two-thirds of the total digital ad spend of $129.34 billion. (eMarketer, 2019)

The largest beneficiary of the increased expenditure was ecommerce giant Amazon, whose ads business in the US increased by over 50 percent. In comparison, its main competitors, Google and Facebook, saw a drop in their market shares.

According to analysts’ forecast, by 2023, the amount of money spent on mobile digital ads will be more than 69% that of the combined digital and traditional ads expenditure.

9. Mobile Retail Conversion Rate

According to the latest mobile statistics, the global retail conversion rate for tablets is 3.48% (Smartinsights, 2021). It’s higher than desktops conversion rate of 2.59 percent. Mobile phones are much lower at 1.86 %.

This goes to show that while consumers enjoy browsing and carrying out product research on their mobile devices, tablets the preferred device for transactions while desktops’ usage for purchases is trending downward.

As we work to improve your online store’s conversion rate, we use these benchmark figures to help us design a store that is tablet, mobile and desktop friendly.

10. Voice Search on Mobile

One aspect we don’t want to miss out on when optimizing your ecommerce store for mobile is the potential of voice search.

More than a third of the online population is using voice search feature on their mobile device at least once a day. As many as 60 percent of smartphone users claim to have tried voice search at least once in the past 12 months. (Quoracreative, 2021)

Over half of all teenagers use voice search every day. Nine percent of those aged between 55 and 64 also use voice search.

On top of optimizing your online store for mobile, we will optimize for voice search queries as well. That means keeping copy to the point and targeting question keywords such as who, what, where, when, why, and how. 

How this helps NewTern improve your online store

From understanding the trend of mobile shopping and how digital ad spend has evolved, we have a better idea of how consumers are engaging with their mobile devices and what the future holds. 

These mobile usage statistics can help us craft a mobile-first strategy that will propel your online ecommerce business forward by getting you higher engagement, traffic, and ultimately, sales. Contact us today to start building your online store with NewTern Solutions.

Summary: Mobile Usage Statistics 

Here’s a summary of the Mobile Usage statistics we think you should know in 2021:

  1. There are 3.6 billion smartphone users worldwide.
  2. US adults spend an average of 2 hours and 55 minutes on their smartphones every day.
  3. 69 percent of internet users prefer to look for reviews on their phones than approach an in-store employee.
  4. Two-thirds of internet users use shopping apps on their mobile devices.
  5. Six out of ten shoppers say the possibility to shop via mobile is an important factor in brand selection.
  6. Mobile web traffic accounts for 52.6 percent of global web traffic.
  7. 70 percent of the total digital media time in the US is spent on smartphones.
  8. More than two-thirds of the total digital ad spend in 2019 was on mobile ads.
  9. The global retail conversion rate on mobile phones is 1.82 percent, compared to 3.9 percent for desktops.
  10. Two out of 5 adults use voice search on their mobile device at least once a day.