Devices (Device Usage metric)
TL;DR
The number of Visitors or Sessions by Device Type metric tells you the type of devices used by visitors to your website in a specific time range.
This information helps you optimize your website design, experience, content, and optimize your content for advertising campaigns.
What is the device type usage in your analytics dashboard?
Device type in your analytics refers to the visitors who use a mobile phone, desktop, or tablet. Some analytics tools display the device brand, as well.
As you might know by now, visitors to a website come from all around the globe and from all sorts of devices. While some industries are more keen to have visitors using a specific device in a high percentage, sometimes you have to declutter your statistics and see what type of device do people use when they visit your site.
Why is the Device Usage essential for you and your site?
Knowing the devices your website is accessed from helps you optimize your design and content for the devices that your customers use and display a consistent experience to your customers no matter the device they use. This means a higher chance to convert your visitor into a customer.
Once you start to analyze the data (e.g., each visitor activity combined with device types), you will see the number of visitors by device type in a specific time range. This helps you observe and analyze trends in your traffic, identify opportunities, and easily see the problems that have an impact on your users based on the device type.
Here a few examples of actions influenced by device type:
- Visitors who use a mobile device (e.g., smartphone) to check a site that’s not mobile-friendly will:
- Bounce fast and spend less time on the site
It is easier to quit a site using a mobile device, and people are used with short content (mobile copywriting) and easy to use websites and apps - if your site lacks these, there is an extremely high chance to lose these customers.
- Be less likely to perform purchases or fill forms
If you have a non-mobile-friendly site, but you want your visitors to buy a product or sign-up to something, there is a low chance for this to happen if the user experience is not smooth.
- visitors who use a desktop device (computer, notebook)
While we know for a fact that mobile devices are the leading source of internet traffic in the US and Europe, the highest percent of people spending/buying something online was coming from visits made through a desktop device. Here are a few facts to know about desktop device visitors:
- They are familiar with long-form content, so if you have a more complex checkout or form, you may want to target desktop users with your ads. However, keep in mind that most of the research is done via mobile devices and the purchase via laptops/notebooks and desktop devices.
- They spend a higher amount of time watching videos. This, again, helps you optimize the product video of your site (make it lengthier or shorter, based on your target group and stats) and optimize your video ads as well!
