The Other, Smaller Internet

There was a funny meme going around online with a picture of someone on their cellphone, and a question written across it, “do you ever get bored with the internet and then grab your phone to see what the other, smaller internet is up to?”… with the joke being that people often retire from using their laptop just to grab their cellphone and start browsing other apps and online content better suited for that device.

This got me thinking about how online content is usually created for consumption across both traditional computers (laptops and desktops) and mobile devices (cell phones and tablets). However, as time progresses, it may behoove web developers to start prioritizing mobile viewership over laptop and desktops.

I sought to explore some interesting statistics about website usages with traditional computers versus mobile devices and found the following via https://techjury.net/

• Majority (51%) of time spent online in the US is on mobile devices
  • And, more than half of all video views come from mobile devices
• There are over 4 billion unique mobile internet users as of October 2019
• 58% of searches on Google are made using mobile devices
  • 40% of people search only on a smartphone

With statistics like this, and the fact usage of mobile is only accelerating, it’s clear just how much people use their phones to access the world wide web – and how important it is to cater to this audience.

What are you doing to ensure your website lends itself to mobile surfers? Are you accounting for this group, or are you still building websites strictly with laptop and desktops in mind?

Let us know what you have done to accommodate this shift to mobile by leaving a comment on our LinkedIn page.

– Lee Sumner, Sr. Research Manager