Several sections within Nick Bilton’s recent NYT’s article on the changes underfoot at Twitter makes me question if companies are approaching their mobile strategy in the most appropriate way. Near the close of the article, Nick writes:
The problem is especially acute on the iPad and other tablets. With tens of millions of tablets in use today, neglecting the tablet experience could harm the company’s overall mobile strategy.
Sarah Rotman Epps, a Forrester research analyst who specializes in mobile computing, said in a new report profiling 200 executives who develop products for tablets that almost all see the tablet as part of the mobile experience, across advertising and features.
“The majority think of their tablet strategy as part of their mobile strategy,” Ms. Epps said in an e-mail.
The GigaOm article Nick cites above highlights data from Monetate suggesting tablets are now driving more ecommerce than smartphones. Ryan Kim writes,
Monetate, which analyzes more than 100 million online shopping experiences, said that in the first quarter of 2012, tablet traffic to commerce sites hit 6.52 percent, overtaking smartphones (5.35 percent) for the first time. In the last year, tablets’ traffic increased 348 percent while smartphones visits grew by 117 percent over the same period. Almost all of the traffic (95 percent) was from the iPad, said Monetate.
The rise of tablets is chipping away at the PC, which saw its share of traffic to commerce sites drop to 88 percent, a steep four percent drop in just one quarter. At this pace, PC traffic should fall below 75 percent within the next year…
Tablets are in many ways performing like PCs when it comes to commerce [emphasis is mine]. Monetate found that tablets converted visits into purchases at a rate of 3.23 percent, not far behind the PC at 3.51 percent and well ahead of smartphones at 1.39 percent. Tablet users view an average of 11.07 pages per session, compared to 12.05 page views for PC users and 7.18 pages for smartphone users. And tablet owners add items to their cart at a rate of 9.66 percent, compared to 10.2 percent for PC users and 4.25 perent for smartphone users.
I’d agree with Sarah Epps’ comment that many if not most companies are approaching their tablet strategy on the guise of their broader mobile strategy. I’d also point out a few things from the Monetate data. First, the PC still controls 88 percent of total commerce site traffic. Secondly, as I emphasized above, Monetate data suggests tablets are performing like PCs when it comes to commerce.
I’d suggest tablets are performing like PCs because consumers are using tablets like PCs. As I’ve written about in the past, while tablets are portable they aren’t necessarily pocketable which makes them unique mobile devices. Yes, they can be toted around like smartphones but their use-case scenarios are primarily within the home. This may in turn suggest that while they are mobile devices in the strictest sense, executives might be well served to approach them as a separate class of devices outside of the traditional mobile ecosystem.
