Over the past year browsing habits across the globe have changed.
According to a study by Kantar Worldwide, web browsing has increased by 70% and social media engagement has increased by 61% over normal usage rates.
SME owners and operators here in the UK are no different and accountants who want to increase their website traffic and conversion need to take advantage of this trend. There is the need to also think about social media in particular, as our own statistics highlight social media through mobile as an increasingly important marketing channel.
We track all our clients’ websites through one global instance of Google Analytics. This gives us the power to see what’s happening to all our clients’ websites at any given time and create accounting-industry-wide benchmarks for marketing performance data and website conversions.
Each month, I dip into the aggregated data to see what’s happened, spot trends and report back on how our clients’ marketing performs.
In this month’s analysis I noticed a 15% increase in traffic from mobile, compared to the previous 60 days. So I thought I would take a closer look at what’s driving that uplift, how that compares to desktop and what the difference is between referring channels to the site and their respective conversion rates.
What I discovered is how mobile users’ routes to our accountants websites differ from desktop – and how you can take advantage of this user journey in your own marketing to increase traffic and conversions from mobile users.
Putting the traffic into context
Mobile traffic makes up 30% of our clients’ overall website traffic, with the remaining 70% from desktop – that is, laptops and PCs.
The volume of Mobile traffic has slowly been increasing throughout the year. But we saw a sharp spike from November last year which has continued throughout January.
The biggest driver of mobile traffic to our websites for accountants over the last 60 days comes via organic search (mostly Google) which makes up 70% of overall mobile traffic. On desktop, this is slightly less at 60%.
However, percentages for paid search, traffic from paid advertising such as Google pay-per-click, are interesting. On mobile it’s at 6% compared to desktop with only 2%.
Direct traffic is the other way around: on desktop, 30% of overall traffic comes direct, whereas on mobile it’s only 14%.
These statistics show a significant difference in behaviour between the two platforms and how mobile users choose to visit accounting firms websites.
Mobile traffic dwarfs desktop from social media
There is a significant difference in the volume of traffic from mobile compared to desktop when it comes to social media.
The percentages of overall traffic coming from social media to our clients’ sites is relatively small, 5% for mobile and 1% on desktop.
However, 213% more traffic comes via social media from mobile than from desktop. The conversion rate from the last 60 days for social media traffic is just under 2%.
In summary, social media is a big driver of traffic for mobile users back to a firm’s website, compared to desktop.
Couple that with a healthy conversion rate. It presents a significant opportunity for accounting firms and their marketing tactics.
How do mobile users prefer to get in touch?
How a mobile user chooses to get in touch isn’t going to be a surprise. The top call to action on mobile is a user tapping the button to call the accounting firm. That makes up 42% of overall conversions on mobile.
On desktop, email is their preferred method of contact (48%) – again fairly unsurprising given the platform. However, email on a mobile equates to 29% of overall conversions.
Whilst the top two calls to action might not be a surprise. It’s how you display these calls to action on your mobile that’s important.
Look at your website on a mobile, then a desktop and ask yourself if your phone number is clear and prominent when you’re on your mobile and then that your email is clear and visible when you’re browsing on a desktop PC.
It sounds simple, but you would be surprised how little attention many firms pay to where these calls to action sit on their websites, let alone how they appear on different devices.
Social media
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How to take advantage of this insight
Mobile users’ behaviour is different to desktop users, and their route to finding your website is different too.
The insight here shows that investing time building a social media presence can provide a significant uplift in traffic and conversions.
But before you embark on opening more marketing channels. Make sure your website is optimised for mobile.
I don’t just mean asking if it is responsive, but whether it has the prospects’ preferred method of contact prominent and easy to access? Does it have a clear user journey to drive prospects down your funnel? Can they easily navigate to your services?
As well as the quick test for call-to-action placement described above, you should also look at the website’s bounce rate and conversion rate for mobile. If users are arriving and immediately leaving, that means they’re not finding what they want or expect to see.
If you want help optimising your website for mobile, or you want to create a social media strategy to take advantage of SMEs browsing on their mobile, get in touch by phone on: 0117 915 0420 or by email.
