The “European Mobile Optimisation” survey by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) revealed that just over a third of the UK’s top 100 brands have a mobile-optimised website.
The figure given by The Internet Advertising Bureau, for us, is a strikingly low figure, especially since Last year’s IAB study on mobile optimisation, which also looked at the UK’s top 100 brands, found that 57% have mobile-optimised websites.
We did a little research, and found some figures from previous IAB studies; when looking at the different industry sectors, it seems that automobile and retail are the best performers when it comes to mobile optimisation. In the automotive sector this year, for example, the websites for every top brand have been optimised, which is better than the average for Europe in its entirety, where the figure stands at 85%.
Nevertheless, this sector looks like it is well ahead of other business areas. The fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector in the UK still has a lot of catching up to do: only 22% of brands’ websites in this sector are mobile-optimised. To compare, in Germany 55% of FMCG brand websites are mobile optimised, as are 44% of them in France, 41% in Spain and 27% in Italy.
No presence for financial services
In the financial services sector, an earlier survey by IAB which was released only one month ago, found that 24% of the top 50 financial services brands in the UK (again in terms of advertising expenditure) have no mobile presence or marketing strategy. A quarter of them had no mobile website or mobile app, and the majority – 78% – didn’t have a responsive design for their websites. The situation was similar for the travel sector, where 34% of the top 50 brands were found to have no mobile presence whatsoever.
As this is our area of speciality, we find these figures quite alarming. Luckily, when it comes to responsive design, almost a quarter (24%) of the top 100 brands in Britain now have responsive websites. We are a bit more proud of this figure, as it means the UK is not only outperforming the rest of Europe but also marks an improvement from 2013, when the figure stood at 11%. To compare, the same metric scored only 15% in Spain, 13% in France and Italy, and 7% in Germany.
UK growth starts here
Although the UK’s online marketing sector may have some redeeming qualities, there are still many improvements brands can make to really get to grips with mobile-optimisation and responsive design. Ignoring the presence of such tactics will leave the UK behind the rest of Europe – but here at Catalyst we can help. By keeping abreast of the latest trends and innovations in the industry, as well as utilising our years of experience in digital, inbound and social media marketing.