Local Gov On The Go - Phil Rumens

In October we launched the mobile version of our site, you can see it by going to www.westberks.gov.uk on a mobile device or tablet. It’s really a stopgap until we kick off a proposed project to redevelop our digital services, next year.

Now we’re in December we’ve got a full month’s stats too look. Here are some of the findings:


Volume
Around 28% of users accessed our mobile site, compared to our main site. That’s a much larger number than I would have thought even six months ago and justifies the week or so we spend creating the mobile site.

If you haven’t got a mobile or site built around responsive design, you really need to start thinking about it.


Pages
Users on the main site looked at an average of 4.34 pages, whilst those on the mobile site looked at 1.83.

There are many ways you could interpret this, but perhaps one might be that mobile users are often looking for one specific thing, whereas fixed users might be searching for a variety of information.

What backs this up is the structure and main page content of the two sites are identical, it’s just the extras and the design that are different.


Browsing Time
Main site users spent on average 15 minutes on the site, mobile users just under 7.


Top Pages
Whilst some of the usual suspects such as school term dates and vacancies appear top of the most viewed pages for the mobile site, the most notable omission is Planning Applications.

The other main difference is that information about specific locations appear much higher, for example one of our waste recycling centres is in the top 10 and our nature discovery centre is not too far behind, in November when they see their visitor numbers decrease due to the weather.

Parking pages are looked at a lot more on the mobile site too.


Conclusion
There’s no major surprises here. People look at less stuff, for a shorter amount of time and it’s more likely to relate to a physical location but it’s good data to support the case for spending time getting your mobile site right.

Oh, and one more stat if you’re interested, over 65% of mobile site users used an Apple device.