Good marketing is more than just flooding social media with ads. Great marketing involves taking advantage of current internet trends.
As a business owner, internet traffic is something you understand with your gut, but it can be frustrating to put into words how to take advantage of it or turn your online presence into real results.
Should you focus on just one platform? Are you wasting money by engaging every user no matter where they are? Why don’t your sales reflect your increased ad spend budget?
The experts at Big Red Jelly have you covered! This is everything you need to know about web traffic: mobile vs desktop.
What Are The Current Internet Trends?
As of 2025, mobile users account for around 59% of all traffic on the internet. This percentage of internet traffic highlights the dominance of mobile devices over desktops and tablets. Similarly, mobile users make 57% of all e-commerce purchases, and experts predict that this will continue to grow to around 64% by 2030. In the United States, 15% of the population use only mobile devices to access the internet.
Globally, internet users are increasingly favoring mobile devices over desktops for browsing, shopping, and social media. Adults in the United States spend around 4 hours and 39 minutes every day on their mobile devices compared to just 2 hours and 20 minutes on desktop computers. According to the latest data and mobile statistics, there is a clear upward trend in mobile internet browsing and mobile usage, with more people relying on their smartphones for daily online activities.
What does this mean? It means that smartphones are the primary way to deliver advertisements to potential customers. The mobile share of web traffic continues to rise, driven by the growing number of mobile internet users worldwide. Experts expect that mobile content will continue to dominate the market as money is invested in new technology and device use evolves.
It means that any marketing strategy that does not include mobile devices is a marketing strategy that leaves money on the table. With changing internet usage patterns, optimizing for mobile internet is now essential for reaching the largest possible audience.
Eagle-eyed readers might notice, however, that there is a three-point difference between web traffic and e-commerce market share for mobile users. Mobile phones play a significant role in shaping mobile internet trends, influencing how users interact with online stores and content. One would expect these numbers to be the same, but three points is a fairly large margin.
Clearly we’re not seeing the whole picture. Let’s look a little closer.
Understanding Web Traffic: Mobile vs Desktop
According to the same studies, mobile traffic is defined by shorter visits, quick interactions, and fast searches, all guided within mobile apps. When analyzing mobile vs desktop usage, it becomes clear that user behavior and traffic patterns differ significantly between platforms. On mobile and desktop devices, users view and interact with content in distinct ways, with mobile users often seeking quick answers and desktop users engaging in more detailed browsing.
Desktop traffic, on the other hand, generally visits fewer websites, spends more time on those websites, consumes more in-depth content, and involves larger purchases than mobile. Desktop devices and desktop usage are characterized by longer session durations, higher engagement, and more extensive browsing habits compared to mobile.
User behavior: mobile vs desktop by the numbers
Mobile traffic
- Average visit duration: 750 seconds
- Visit duration: Between 704 and 775 seconds per visit
- Bounce rate: 60%
- Purchase preference: one-click checkout, smaller purchases
- Browsing behavior: Approximately 88% of web traffic is within apps, less than 12% is on browsers. More content consumption and browsing
Desktop traffic
- Average visit duration: 1,000 seconds
- Visit duration: Between 996 and 1,918 seconds per visit
- Bounce rate: 50%
- Purchase preference: Product comparisons, in-depth descriptions, larger purchases
- Browsing behavior: A majority of time is spent on web browsers. Less content consumption, more research and detailed analysis.
These trends even remain relatively constant across generational and class divides, and they also explain the discrepancy between web traffic share and e-commerce activity.
People are more comfortable making larger, more expensive purchases when they have more information available to them on one screen, making desktops the default purchase option when it comes to these types of purchases. This is particularly true of the luxury, electronics, or travel industries.
These data put a hard ceiling on how much time you have to convert your visitors to customers.
For example: if you have a sales funnel that takes more than 750 seconds to navigate from beginning to end in one visit, chances are you’re taking too long to convert your visitor.
A good strategy, in this case, would be to time how long it might take an average person to get your full “sales pitch” from your website and cut it down if it takes too long.
On the other hand, desktop users might feel rushed if presented with the same information this way. Remember that they are expecting more information on a desktop browser. These visitors are more patient, and are more willing to click links presented to them.
This also means that any traffic directed to your business on mobile is usually through an app, while any traffic on desktop is usually through a web search or other website.
Converting Web Traffic: Mobile vs Desktop
One trend we didn’t cover in the previous section is the wide chasm in bounce rates between mobile users and desktop users.
Bounce rate is a measure of how many visitors to your website end their visit without taking any action or clicking any buttons. This can include:
- Signing up for a newsletter or email list
- Clicking a link to learn more about a product or service
- Sharing a post
- Connecting social media
- Anything that shows your visitor reacted to your content in some way
User engagement often varies significantly between mobile and desktop users, with differences in engagement rates, bounce rates, and how users interact with content across devices.
Salespeople know that understanding bounce rate is absolutely key in understanding their customer and closing the sale.
The ten-point difference in bounce rate shows that while users might be visiting more sites on mobile by a large margin, they’re not engaging with those sites nearly as much.
Tracking key metrics, such as bounce rate and engagement for both mobile and desktop users, is essential to identify areas for improvement and optimize your content strategy for each device.
Why? Maybe they’re saving the page to visit later on their desktop. Perhaps they visit so many pages they simply don’t have the time or desire to interact with every one. Or, the fact they visit so many pages might mean they only interact with the pages that are truly special or unique.
But, in the end, all this boils down to the simple fact that they didn’t connect with the content.
And that’s the key. When it comes to web traffic on mobile vs desktop: the most effective SEO strategy and optimized user behavior models won’t do anything if your visitors don’t connect with your content.
Maximizing Web Traffic Value: What Can You Do?
Even with such surface-level data, there are still plenty of actionable steps you can take to improve your internet presence and the strength of your brand online. Here are four easy things you can do today:
- Consider that customers often switch from mobile to desktop in the middle of their visit if they are progressing through your sales funnel. In fact, around 76% of all visitors online switch between mobile and desktop mid-task. Multi device purchases are common, with users frequently starting a transaction on one device and completing it on another, so your site should support seamless transitions.
Does your website reflect this journey in its design and how it presents information? (This includes researching a product on the desktop version of your website and checking out on mobile).
- Analyze your website for how often you prompt your visitors to engage with your brand. How often do you ask them for their email or present them with a link to click in the first few minutes of their visit? Do you vary the types of engagement you present?
- Remember that there is a sizable population that only accesses the internet on mobile devices. Is your brand designed with a mobile-first mentality? Optimizing for both mobile and desktop users is essential—ensure your mobile website, mobile UX, and mobile version are well-designed for a seamless experience. Pay attention to the unique needs of mobile sites and desktop sites, as each supports different user journeys and engagement patterns.
Mobile websites should be more than just smaller versions of your desktop website. Instead of trying to cram everything into a vertical format, it might be time to redesign your website from the ground up.
- Do the SEO basics for your website. Consider these common issues: Do you have good content? Are you consistently adding new and original content? Are you answering questions that your customers regularly ask in a natural way? Remove any broken links on your website. Develop a content strategy and implement comprehensive SEO to optimize your site for all devices and user behaviors. Make sure your website is optimized for search engines, and be merchant savvy by understanding how users interact with your site across devices.
Is your website included on listings like Google Business Profile, your Facebook company page, LinkedIn, and other relevant pages? Does your website load fast? Do you have meta titles and meta descriptions for every page?
Key takeaways:
- Users often make multi device purchases, so seamless experiences across both mobile and desktop are crucial.
- Optimize for both mobile and desktop users with a strong mobile website, mobile UX, and mobile version.
- Address the needs of both mobile sites and desktop sites to support different user journeys.
- A comprehensive SEO and content strategy, along with merchant savvy and search engine optimization, will maximize your web traffic value.
Conclusion
When it comes to web traffic on mobile vs desktop the forecast is pretty clear: the future is mobile.
So, what does this mean for you? Many marketers and agencies might tell you to optimize your website for “desktop vs mobile user experience”, to implement “mobile-first indexing”, or mumble something about “mobile SEO best practices”, along with other industry buzzwords.
But the days that business leaders fall for that are long past.
You know what you need, you know you should be creating content based not only on the demographics of your target audience, but also where they interact with your brand.
You know that having responsive web design and traffic is more than just resizing your website to fit on a smaller screen.
You know that the differences between mobile vs desktop website traffic can drastically impact the purchasing experience of your customers.
You know what your goal is, you just need someone to help you outline a roadmap to get you there.
Written by Aaron Webber Jr.
