Continuing Education Benchmarks: Mobile Device Usage on CE Sites

Visits by mobile device, % of mobile visits, and year over year increase in mobile visits

The charts above illustrate three metrics related to the use of mobile devices to access our continuing education benchmarking sites. The first chart lists the proportion of mobile visits by device. The second chart demonstrates the proportions of total visits coming from mobile devices of any kind. The third chart shows the increase in use of mobile devices to access CE sites compared to last year.

The data was collected from one month of data across 20 Google Analytics profiles. The data for these schools is plotted in descending order to give a sense of the trend in our industry.

What we found

Device type

The most common devices are Apple devices, making up 78% of mobile traffic to our CE benchmarking sites. 

• The iPad is the most common device used to access CE sites, account for just over 36% of mobile visits.
• The iPhone came in close second with just under 36% of total mobile visits.
• Android devices were third with 16% of total mobile visits.
• All other devices (including BlackBerry, Windows phones, iPod, and others) totaled under 12% of total mobile visits.

Proportion of visits from mobile devices

The average site receives about 4.4% of visits from mobile devices. However, there was substantial variance here.

• Sites saw at least 2% of visits coming from mobile devices.
• Sites saw as much as 12% of visits coming from mobile devices.

Increase in Mobile Usage

The visits coming from mobile devices has risen dramatically in the past 12 months. In particular, the introduction of the iPad and the rise in popularity of Android devices were driving this trend.

• All sites experienced an increase of 70% or more in visits from mobile devices.
• On the high end, sites experienced increases as high as 1,300% in percent of visits coming from mobile devices.
• 28% sites had no visits from mobile devices last year, but all had mobile visits this year.

What does this mean?

Look at your Google Analytics account, and see where you fall on these charts.

If your site is on the high-end of visits from mobile devices, then you should make sure your site is mobile-friendly. You may even consider designing a separate mobile site, with the same information, to ensure mobile visitors can get the information they need and possibly even enroll in a class or two!

These days, when designing a website, it's not enough to make sure the site displays correctly on different browsers. Clearly with the upward trend in mobile device use, sites in our industry need to consider these users as well.