Traffic from mobile devices dropped 9% last year

Desktop isn’t going away and don’t expect your app to get you new customers, that’s according to a new study by Contentsquare. The report found that 58% of traffic came from mobile devices last year, a 9% drop YOY. It also found that returning users made up 92% of traffic coming from apps.

The report, 2022 Digital Experience Benchmark, analyzed over one hundred data points from 46 billion user sessions across 3,870 global websites.

Of the 12 sectors studied, mobile generated the most traffic for the luxury goods’ sites, with 76% of visitors coming from that channel. Beauty (74%) and pharmaceutical (73%) were close behind. Unsurprisingly, B2B was the desktop leader at 78%. Among B2C sectors, financial services (60%) and consumer electronics (53%) got the most desktop traffic. The study also found that desktop had a 91% higher average order value than mobile.

The overwhelming majority of traffic to business sites comes from unpaid. Search engines, social networks, website referrals and the like generated 75% of all traffic, down from 80% in 2020. Financial services lead all sectors with 92% of traffic coming from unpaid, while pharmaceuticals had the most coming from paid sources at 44%.

Finally, app users’ spent an average of 2 minutes and 43 seconds on a site, comparable to mobile (2:39) and far behind desktop at 5:55.

Why we care: Despite the amazing amount of time we spend on our mobile devices, desktop still matters a lot. That’s why any digital strategy needs to be device agnostic in order to succeed. It’s also essential to know who is using your apps. Because they don’t attract new users, they need to focused on rewarding customer loyalty.

About The Author

Constantine von Hoffman is managing editor of MarTech. A veteran journalist, Con has covered business, finance, marketing and tech for CBSNews.com, Brandweek, CMO, and Inc. He has been city editor of the Boston Herald, news producer at NPR, and has written for Harvard Business Review, Boston Magazine, Sierra, and many other publications. He has also been a professional stand-up comedian, given talks at anime and gaming conventions on everything from My Neighbor Totoro to the history of dice and boardgames, and is author of the magical realist novel John Henry the Revelator. He lives in Boston with his wife, Jennifer, and either too many or too few dogs.