Imaginary Landscape
RSS FeedGoogle analytics did not introduce formal mobile device reporting until November of 2009, but that does not mean you cannot track your mobile traffic before that time. There are a large number of discussions about how to configure current GA features to track mobile visits, but how do you track historical information and compare apples to apples if you did not configure Advanced Segments or set up other tracking methods a year or two ago? Here are a number of ways in which to track your mobile device site visits previous to November 2009:
- Screen Resolution – You can track resolutions such as 320X396, 480X320, 320X480, 320X240, etc. as Mobile devices. This will provide you with a good general overview of how many visitors are using touchscreen devices vs. older devices.
- Browsers/OS – You can analyze browser/OS combos such as Safari/iPhone, Blazer/Palm OS, Blackberry 9530/Blackberry, NetFront/Samsung, etc. to find the specific device/browser combo data. This will give you the specific manufacturers and browsers, but may leave some ambiguity for manufacturers like Palm and Blackberry, who use the same OS and browsers across multiple devices. The granular nature of this reporting method can make it clunky to work with.
- Service Providers can give some insight, but due to the overlap of services offered by different companies these numbers can be difficult to interpret.
All of these tracking methods can be found under the Visitors category in Google Analytics.
Which method you decide to use depends on what you will be using the stats to determine. If you are looking at mobile traffic to determine if you need a mobile specific site then screen resolution will give you the information you need. If you are deciding what platforms you should develop a mobile application for, you will need to analyze the Browser/OS combos.
The JavaScript issue
This still leaves the issue of mobile devices that do not execute JavaScript. Looking at our analytics I believe that in most cases this is not a major issue. You can use JavaScript Support to identify how many visits you are missing. In my experience I have never seen this number of users being a large percentage of users – 2 to 6 percent is typical for our clients. The rise in mobile usage is due not only to new hardware, but also due to the fact that mobile devices can now utilize javascript and provide users with an experience that is close to traditional web browsers.
If you find that a large number of your site visitors do not have JavaScript enabled, or you are concerned with getting data on visitors without JavaScript, you should investigate alternatives to use in place of Google Analytics, such as log based tracking solutions. Ultimately, you need to look at your total traffic and determine if the ROI of the website supports the building of a specific mobile site that does not utilize JavaScript. For some clients this may offer a good ROI, but in most instances the return on building a Javascript free mobile site does not support the effort, especially considering that the percentage of Javascript enabled mobile devices is increasing every year.
Updated 08/24/10 @ 10:56AM CDT by cpeters
Categories: Technology User Interface
