Tracking Mobile Users with Google Analytics

Melanie Wahl - June 27, 2011

Think for a second of what you would do if you were a customer looking for your products or services on your favorite ________ (fill in your handheld device here — we know you have one). Your company’s page begins to load and then — gasp – something goes wrong. Maybe the page stops loading, maybe it isn’t sized for easy viewing, maybe there is too much content on the page and your phone is overloaded or you have to scroll to the south poll to find the content you want. You click away. In this theoretical example, you may have reached your company’s website, but the poor user experience drove you away. Don’t let this happen to your customers!

Google Analytics can identify which mobile devices are accessing your website right now. If you currently have Google Analytics installed, you can access this information in just a few clicks. The mobile section in Google Analytics (in both the current and New Version) will enable you to delve into the data of website viewers on the go.

The Mobile Devices / Mobile dashboards default to organizing your data by Operating System (iPod, iPhone, iPad, Windows, BlackBerry, Android, etc.) You can then segment your data by a second dimension as the following screenshot shows.

Designers and developers may be interested in diving deeper into Screen Colors, Screen Resolution, Flash Version, Java Support, and other dimensions pertinent to their work. By digging into your mobile user data, you can answer some overarching questions and some very specific ones:

Q: How much of my incoming traffic is from mobile?
Q: What is the traffic breakdown between mobile devices?
Q: Is mobile traffic as a whole performing well for conversions or goal completions? Is there one specific Operating System that is delivering better traffic than others?
Q: Has my website been tested on all of these mobile device platforms for user experience?
Q: Is my website designed to be functional for visitors who have smaller screen resolutions? Mobile flash versions? No Java Script?

Your team can customize the experience of visitors to your website from a mobile device. Customized user experience is the future of mobile websites.

Keep monitoring MoreVisibility’s Analytics blog for information on Google’s just released new mobile report features!