Mobile Traffic Booms in Ag.

By Bob West

So many marketers in specialty ag struggle with their websites. What content should be on there? How often should they be updated? How do you ensure they’re optimized for search?

Well, the numbers from our Google Analytics data illustrate that marketers have one more question to add to the list: How do we ensure a quality experience for visitors on mobile devices?

Mobile visits (phones and tablets) to Meister Media’s eight most popular web sites nearly doubled in 2013, with GreenhouseGrower.com, GrowingProduce.com and CropLife.com all seeing mobile traffic jump by more than 250% from 2012. (See chart below for mobile traffic for all of these websites.)

Mobile traffic now accounts for nearly 19% of all site visits on these websites, led by Cotton247.com, which saw its mobile visits surpass 25%.

Meister Media’s two sites that primarily serve international audiences see the lowest amount of mobile traffic as WiFi access and smartphone use lags that in the United States, but mobile traffic still doubled to both Hortalizas.com and FarmChemicalsInternationals.com.

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Digging deeper into the data offers further insights into these growers’ use of mobile devices, including:
  • It’s an Apple world. More than 80% of the mobile traffic to these sites in 2013 occurred on an Apple device, with the iPhone being the most widely used device.
  • Tablets clearly offer a superior web browsing experience than do phones. The average number of pages per visit on tablets was 30% higher than the number of pages per visit on phones in 2013. Tablet users actually spend more time on the sites than do desktop visitors, likely due to the fact that desktop visits occur during the workday while tablet visits are more likely to happen in the evenings when growers have more downtime.
What does this mean for marketers?As noted at the top, marketers have to ensure prospective customers can find the information they need regardless of how they visit your website. Companies not willing to or able to create mobile-friendly sites will likely lose traffic and sales opportunities to competitors that do so. Fortunately, recent developments in responsive design simplify this web chore for marketers and eliminate many obstacles for satisfying your customers’ growing need for information on the move.The author is Director of Interactive Sales for Meister Media, and he can be reached at 440-602-9129 or [email protected].