IAB says major players, including B&Q and Argos, are failing on mobile

Nearly two-thirds of leading UK brands have failed to develop fully optimised mobile websites, and are thus failing to extract the maximum benefits offered by this channel, according to new research.

The Internet Advertising Bureau, the trade body, assessed the performance of the top 100 domestic advertisers in this area, and found 37% boasted mobile sites which met this criteria, a group that included Tesco, Marks & Spencer, Boots, Argos and B&Q.

More broadly, it discovered that optimised sites pulled in 192% more unique visitors than their non-optimised alternatives, alongside 304% more daily visitors and 490% more total visits.

And those visitors also logged a higher dwell time, browsing content for an average of five minutes on platforms specifically adapted for this channel, two minutes longer than for the more basic equivalents.

Similarly, consumers logging on to optimised sites looked at an average of 19 pages per month, versus 12 for visitors to non-optimised sites.

"This study has shown that, across a number of measures, optimising websites increases consumer engagement," Alex Kozloff, the IAB's senior mobile manger, said. "Though it is encouraging seeing that 40% of the top UK advertisers are sitting up and listening to this, we still have work to do with the rest."

With over 14m people in the UK now accessing the web from their phone every day, it is crucial that brands ensure their content is easily accessible and create a seamless experience, the analysis added.

Research published by the IAB last year also revealed the detrimental effects of not having an optimised mobile site on purchase rates.

It found that some 30% of consumers said they would abandon an m-commerce acquisition or switch between vendors if their first choice of retailer did not have a site that worked on their phone.

Source : WARC
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