Mobile Is Not Destroying Desktop Traffic

[engine]

There's an interesting piece on WSJ citing data from comScore's latest research: Mobile has grown considerably, but not to the detriment of desktop.

I have to admit, I was expecting declines in traffic with all the talk of mobile growth, but, it doesn't look like that to me. I would tend to agree that mobile traffic has gone up, but i've not seen the desktop decline.

I have seen declines in some traffic referrals from Google, and slight increases in Bing referrals, but traffic overall, with a few exceptions, is up. I'm generalising, of course, because some sites and some pages have seen declines, and others have increased.

How has your desktop traffic been holding up?

People are increasingly accessing online content on mobile devices, but that doesn’t mean the desktop is in decline.

A theory sometimes bandied about the media industry says audiences are deserting desktops and “going mobile” instead. But actually, data from online measurement firms doesn’t seem to support that view, at least at the aggregate market level.

The share of overall consumption coming from mobile devices is growing, but desktop web usage isn’t dropping. In fact, it might be increasing. Mobile Is Not Destroying Desktop Traffic [blogs.wsj.com]

According to data from comScore, for example, the overall time spent online with desktop devices in the U.S. has remained relatively stable for the past two years. Time spent with mobile devices has grown rapidly in that time, but the numbers suggest mobile use is adding to desktop use, not subtracting from it.

[webcentric]

This discussion is somewhat weaving around "what people do with technology" rather than the original premise that desktop traffic is not decreasing because of mobile usage. Point one is that the results we're discussing are a measurement observed by webmasters reflecting who is coming to our sites and what type of device they used to get there. I'm pretty sure the guy with the gazillion dollar desktop (that doesn't even know how to cut and paste) and a mobile phone he doesn't even know how to answer, probably doesn't factor into this conversation. He may get lucky and land on my site from either device but he's only an increase in the equation either way.

If we're only talking about people who use Internet devices strictly for email and social media, you'll have to factor in all the links they follow from email and various SM feeds. Those links take them to the web in a great many cases.

In my field, there are some interesting trends related to mobile vs desktop where time of day and day of the week are concerned. Mobile traffic goes up on the weekend (significantly) for example. Makes sense. People are out of the house. But I also notice the types of information people are looking for in the car on their mobile phone. A huge percentage are looking for addresses, driving directions, phone numbers, hours of operation, etc. They're not looking to get car-sick while reading an article.

On the road, mobile devices create an environment of immediately useful information and connectivity with friends and colleges. When a college student sits down to research and write a term paper, they need desktop-grade applications in combination with the Internet. I can't do my work (programming) on a phone (or even a tablet) and the Internet is an integral part of what I do. Mobile productivity seems mostly connected to communication connections whereas desktop productivity is where all the power of computing comes together like nowhere else for the common user and/or the power user. Until mobile gets a grasp on practical productivity beyond communications, desktop environments are here to stay.

Having said that, if they can create a watch that I can control with my mind that contains all my favorite applications, desktop is dead. Voice transcription may be able to produce a passable email but I haven't seen it be able to format a spreadsheet or build a PowerPoint presentation.

[webcentric]

I'll add a bit of first-hand detail to this as well. My girlfriend wakes up to an alarm on her cell phone. Then she checks the weather and reads a little news (all on her phone). When she's maintaining her company's website or social media accounts and doing the million other things she does at work, she's doing it on a desktop. She creates reports, pays bills and myriad other tasks on her laptop (docked to a large screen and full-sized keyboard) at home but when she can't sleep at night, she can spend hours playing Candy Crush on her phone.

I hate using the Internet on my phone and pretty much use it as a phone book. Will tweet once and awhile and occasionally check email but I'm not into writing email on a touch keyboard. Oh, and I review my sites for mobile layouts on a variety of devices. Where productivity is concerned, I see it happening on a desktop/laptop.

[EditorialGuy]

Voice transcription may be able to produce a passable email but I haven't seen it be able to format a spreadsheet or build a PowerPoint presentation.

Dictation is nothing new, but not everyone is comfortable with it, even for text documents. And in many environments (such as an office cubicle, a shared office space), or even the family living room), it's clumsy, inconvenient, or annoying to other people. IMHO, there's a big difference between asking Siri to do something and dictating a long letter, memorandum, or term paper.

[Whitey]

The local Computer Repair guy will tell you something different.. Mobile has killed his Desktop PC repair business...

.. other factors. Cheaper to buy or upgrade than have someone spend your $$'s.

I think the mobile experience has taken over in some areas - very strongly. Where there's mobility & access, there's growth :

- taxi / Uber
- tours / Geocaching
- restaurants / mobile experience

Basically people want it now, anywhere, anytime . Desktop can't do that. The big movers are all about mobility and disrupting capital intensive business'. I do think this is a new revolution, as big as the internet itself.