Optimizing
the Law School’s website for mobile devices is one of those things that
has been on my to-do list since just about the day I started here. But
it is, alas, one of those long-term projects that continually gets
pushed to the bottom of the list due to more immediate, deadline-driven
concerns. The new website we launched last summer -- built, as it is, in
a generally web-standards-compliant fashion -- is somewhat more
mobile-friendly then the previous version, but we did not have the
budget or time to build in a mobile-specific site to that project.
This summer, however, I am determined to make some headway in this area, particularly after catching Justin Gatewood’s very helpful presentation on using CSS for this purpose at the 2010 eduWeb conference. Before I dive into the CSS, however, I need to figure out what it is that UChicagoLaw’s mobile are (or would like to be) using our site for.
Enter Google Analytics. We’ve had Analytics installed on the Law School’s website for a while now, and I browse our stats periodically, especially looking for broken links) but digging deeper into all of the tools that Analytics has to offer has been yet another one of those projects that winds up tabled in favor of dealing with more immediate concerns. However, after a little stumbling blindly around the site, I was able to create an “Advanced Segment” that would separate mobile users out from the rest of the site’s users.
Here is what I was able to discover about our mobile users over the time period roughly corresponding with the 2009-2010 academic year:
This summer, however, I am determined to make some headway in this area, particularly after catching Justin Gatewood’s very helpful presentation on using CSS for this purpose at the 2010 eduWeb conference. Before I dive into the CSS, however, I need to figure out what it is that UChicagoLaw’s mobile are (or would like to be) using our site for.
Enter Google Analytics. We’ve had Analytics installed on the Law School’s website for a while now, and I browse our stats periodically, especially looking for broken links) but digging deeper into all of the tools that Analytics has to offer has been yet another one of those projects that winds up tabled in favor of dealing with more immediate concerns. However, after a little stumbling blindly around the site, I was able to create an “Advanced Segment” that would separate mobile users out from the rest of the site’s users.
Here is what I was able to discover about our mobile users over the time period roughly corresponding with the 2009-2010 academic year:
- Visits by mobile device users comprised just over 1% of total visits.
- Pageviews by mobile devices comprised less than 1% of total pageviews.
- iPhone, iPad, and iPod users were by far the most frequent viewers of the site, making close to 80% of all visits. Android users were a distant second, at just over 10% of visits.
- To my surprise, over a third of our mobile pageviews appeared to have been by prospective students (i.e., within the prospective students section of our site), with the page containing the link to allow them to check their application status being accessed even more than often than the site’s home page.
- By contrast, pageviews of pages clearly identifiable as being of interest primarily to students made up just 10% of the total.
- Internal search resulted in almost exactly 1% of pageviews, with course-related information being the most commonly sought data.
- Most external searches (i.e. via Google) were for some variation of the school’s name, followed by the status checker and assorted other admissions-related items.
- There were few visits to our contact/directory page and very few searches (internal or external) for the terms “directory” or “contact” This was also suprising, as I would expect that users on their mobile devices might frequently be looking for phone numbers or email addresses.
