SPONSORED: Mobile-Friendly Websites - An Inside Look at the Numbers

Undoubtedly, you’ve been made privy to the importance of having your dental website mobile-friendly. Whether it’s by the onslaught of dental online marketing companies telling you such, your own experience surfing the web, or your tech-savvy nephew, you get it.  

I’m not here to tell you anything differently. To echo past sentiments, a mobile-friendly website is absolutely critical to your SEO and patient-finding endeavors. On the SEO side, Google’s “Mobilegeddon” update began penalizing websites that weren’t mobile-friendly by April 21, 2015. For user-friendliness, if your website isn’t mobile-friendly than you can kiss any patient goodbye when they visit your website and are forced to pinch, poke, and zoom their screen to read any relevant information.

However, I’m not here to beat a dead horse. What I want to do is pull back the curtains a bit look at the raw numbers. To do so, I pulled Google Analytic data of 50 random dental websites managed by VivioSites and compared their statistics from the first 10 months of 2014 to the first 10 months of 2015. Here are two important trends that I’ve found.

Trend #1: More mobile users this year than last year

Conventional wisdom tells us that each passing year, more and more people are using smartphones to research local information. This sample set of data supports that assumption. Last year, 20.2% of all website traffic (in our study) was from mobile devices. This year, 33.8% of all website traffic is from mobile devices, meaning more than 1 in every 3 patients is now relying on your website’s optimization to gather information about you and make an appointment! To break it down by websites and not total users, 80% (40/50) of dental websites saw an increased percentage of mobile users compared to last year.

Trend #2: Apple iOS > Android… for now

In the first half of 2014, Apple iOS had a 60% share of mobile traffic to the VivioSites dental websites, compared to 38% for Android (1% for Blackberry and 1% for Windows). In 2015, Apple iOS kept the majority but dropped a few points in the percentage race, keeping 55% of all mobile traffic (down 5% from 2014) while Android increased their market share to 43% (up 5% from 2014). Blackberry and Windows remained at 1% each. We will be monitoring web traffic to see whether or not the iPhone 6 and 6s can reverse those numbers, considering it put Apple over Android in total number of smartphone sales for the first time since 2012.

Trend #3: Less time spent on mobile website, but more appointment requests

From 2014 to 2015, the average time spent on these sampled mobile-friendly websites decreased by almost 10 seconds. However, appointment requests (through the appointment request feature on the website and through the one-click phone number) went up 10% in the same time frame. Are patients making their decisions quicker? Are they doing the research on their computers then using their smartphones later when they have time to make the call? Time will tell but one thing is certain, clear calls-to-action should be prominently displayed on every page on your mobile-device because those users are more apt to be on the go.

Tip of the iceberg

These pieces of data should be seen as the tip of the iceberg to dentists.  Searches on mobile devices have finally surpassed searches on the computer and your practice should be ready for it. If not, it’s worth looking into upgrading your web presence. Interested in another trend? Leave a comment and I’ll do my best to get you the information.

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Anthony Giovine is the director of marketing at VivioSites, a leading online dental marketing company that specializes in acquiring patients for dental practices through mobile-friendly websites and advanced search engine optimization. VivioSites’ customer-first philosophy stresses no contracts and unlimited, live support with experts that get to know each individual practice. To learn more about how VivioSites helps dentists across North America reach the first page on Google, Yahoo!, and Bing, visit their website or email info@viviosites.com.