It should come as no surprise that smartphone users are constantly interacting with their device – sending emails, checking social media, sharing photos, downloading apps, and checking websites.  But when shopping and viewing retailers, do you use a mobile site, or an app?

Nielsen conducted research from this past holiday season with 5,000 metered smartphone users and discovered that users prefer a mobile website over branded apps.  However, users who downloaded the app spent more time in the app than the mobile site.  Basically, mobile sites mean more traffic but less engagement, and apps mean fewer users but more engagement.

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That’s important data when you are a small business that’s considering how to tackle mobile traffic.  If you know how you’ll measure your ROI, this information can be quite valuable.

One Comment

  1. great to see that mobile websites are beating mobile apps.

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