• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, March 23, 2021

Globally, 68.1% of all website visits in 2020 came from mobile devices -- up from 63.3% in 2019.

Desktops drove 28.9% of visits, with tablets driving about 3.1%. They also drove 53.3% of the total time onsite in the U.S. and 46.4% of total time onsite globally.

The data is the basis for a report published today by Perficient in which Eric Enge, principal of digital marketing solutions for the company, analyzed traffic patterns in the U.S. and globally around mobile, tablet, and desktop use on the web.

Mobile still presents "ease of use challenges on devices, but the screens and the keywords are smaller," he said. "Those challenges will remain in place for the foreseeable future," and voice, which is often used on a mobile phone, will not replace searching and buying in the near future.

Enge also looked at which market segments attract visitors who choose to stay on a site longest. The data analyzes 25 industries, such as Shopping, Travel & Transportation, and Business & Industry, comparing 2019 and 2020 trends.

The data in the study was pulled from Google Analytics’ Benchmarking feature that provides aggregated industry data from companies who share their data.

Mobile's share of total visits, not surprisingly, continues to grow steadily — but desktop devices still command the most total time onsite.

This data also breaks down metrics by industry. For example, sports content has the largest percentage of visitors on mobile devices at 78% globally, but in the U.S., this is led by news content at 73%.

Tablet users spend significantly more time on sites, at 582 seconds — compared with mobile users at 343 seconds, and desktop users at 372 seconds for Books & Literature content, globally. 

Desktop users spend significantly more time on site — at 530 seconds — than mobile users at 168 seconds or tablet users at 307 seconds in the Arts & Entertainment category globally.

In the U.S., desktop users spend significantly more time on sites — 469 seconds, compared with mobile users at 158 seconds, or tablet users at 289 seconds in the — Arts & Entertainment category.

Despite what marketers might hear about an increase of searches and clicks moving to mobile, it still has the highest bounce rate in every industry except food and drink, where desktop leads, according to the data.

Some of the categories with the highest bounce rate include Reference; Science; Law & Government; News; Pets & Animals; and Sports.

Tablets show the lowest bounce rate in every category except books and literature, and real estate.

In the U.S., mobile has the highest bounce rate in most categories. Desktop is higher in the categories of food and drink, and desktop and mobile are tied for finance and online communities.

Desktop has the most pages per visit, except in games, books and literature, and online communities.

Mobile scores the highest for online communities, lowest in the news category, and tablet has the most pages per visit for the other two categories. In the U.S., pages per visit on tablets are highest on Real Estate, Shopping, Games, and Books & Literature.