The Desktop Vs Mobile Report (2023): Where SMBs Get Their Users Wrong

Published on: 20 Sep 2023 | Author: Jorge Uceda

In this Marketing Report:

Not so mobile after all: 52% prefer booking on desktop
Mobile is preferred for requesting rides and booking restaurants
Speed and ease of navigation: top priorities for users when deciding between mobile and desktop
30% of businesses are mobile-optimised; 15% are desktop-only
Business investments in mobile: 15% can’t find the right partner
Industry breakdown: From travel and healthcare to banking and events
Methodology

Today, with 6 billion mobiles in the world, the choice between mobile and desktop experiences plays a pivotal role in shaping how businesses connect with customers.

This study investigates user preferences for mobile and desktop interfaces and assesses how effectively businesses are meeting these preferences.

If you’ve got a website, is app development the next step? Or would investing that money in better website design make more sense?

Join us as we explore this dynamic to see if businesses find actionable insights for success in the digital age.

At a glance:

Our survey indicates that people still prefer to book things on desktop – but businesses still think their users prefer mobile. Scroll to learn more about this gap 👇.

30% of businesses surveyed are mobile-optimised and 22% receive mobile traffic – but 14.5% are still desktop only. Are they falling behind? 🤔

As many as 15% of businesses say they won’t invest in mobile readiness because they can’t find the right partner. Read on to see how Sortlist can help with that 🔍.

Not so mobile after all: 52% prefer booking on desktop

By a narrow, yet revealing margin, desktop still trumps mobile for users when it comes to booking online.

However, data at Sortlist shows that businesses still think their users prefer mobile—in fact, as many as 66% of SMBs still believe so, showing a disparity between how users behave and what businesses are delivering. Let’s dive deeper.

Mobile is preferred for requesting rides and booking restaurants

If we look at the preferences by user activity, it becomes clear which are more prone to be done on mobile and which on desktop.

In particular, requesting rides for transportation (75.38%) and booking reservations on restaurants (69.9%) seem to be done mostly on mobile.

statistics for transportation and restaurants, mobile vs desktop

Below you can see the split of mobile and desktop preference per activity surveyed:

However, data at Sortlist shows that these preferences vary by country. Below you can see the preference split of some of the most common activities in the United Kingdom:

Speed and ease of navigation: top priorities for users when deciding between mobile and desktop

When it comes to deciding between mobile and desktop, users’ priorities are also different depending on the country.

In the United Kingdom, businesses and users are mostly aligned in terms of their priorities for mobile and desktop.

ease of navigation top priority for users in the UK when deciding between mobile or desktop

These are the priorities of users in the UK and how they compare to the global average:

30% of businesses are mobile-optimised; 15% are desktop-only

We asked SMBs across several industries about how prepared their businesses were when it came to mobile readiness.

However, not every business seems to be aligned with what users prefer, particularly on mobile. If we look again at the activities analysed before, we see a clear disparity between users’ preferences for those activities and the perception of businesses in the industries related to those activities.

The industries in which that disparity is smallest are banking and transportation, and even in those there’s a 10% gap between users and businesses.

Business investments in mobile: 15% can’t find the right partner

However, when looking at the global results across markets, it’s evident that most businesses are undervaluing the importance that users place on speed and ease of navigation; we see in both of them the highest differences between users’ needs and businesses’ perceptions.

Given these differences, we wanted to ask the SMBs who were not planning to invest in mobile to specify the reasons for that.

reasons for not investing in mobile readiness

And 15% said they won’t do so because they can’t find the right partner, highlighting the need for better business-provider synergy.

Choosing the right provider is a minefield. It can be a make or break hire for an SMB. They all seem good… are those at the top of Google the best, or do they have the best SEO?

There’s a lack of transparency about service providers, and it holds many businesses back. That’s especially true with the smaller providers: huge talents that can go uncovered.

That’s why we founded Sortlist, to bring that transparency, and match businesses with the best agency, not just the biggest.
Nicolas Finet, foundeR of Sortlist

Industry breakdown: From travel and healthcare to banking and events

Restaurants

Mobile user preferences vs. preparedness of businesses in the Restaurant industry

The number of restaurant businesses that are desktop-only almost mirrors the number of users that prefer to book reservations there. But the industry is not missing out, as 60% of SMBs say they have their own app, which is ideal in order to capture the more than 60% of users that prefer mobile.

Top priorities for UK Restaurant businesses by level of preparedness