This post focuses on your Google Analytics dashboard. If you don’t have GA installed already, get your free account set up + running. Then after 24 hours, you’ll have some data to look at to learn what device type folks are viewing your site on.
Learn what devices your visitors use with Google Analytics
It’s pretty difficult to ignore the need for a mobile-friendly site these days. Especially with Google rewarding websites (aka giving them a higher ranking in search results) for being mobile-friendly.
But is a mobile site a requirement for you? The best way to find out is to get the facts straight from your site users.
In your Google Analytics GA4 dashboard, go to the web site data for your specific domain. Then you’ll want to click on Reports > User > Tech > Overview.
This part of your dashboard will breakdown your site traffic into 3 categories — desktop, tablet + mobile.
The above stats are straight from this site — but what’s interesting is that mobile traffic to tinyblueorange.com has increased by over 70% in the last year alone. So even though desktop is the most common device used to view this content, mobile makes up a little less than half of all site traffic. That’s enough to make it worthwhile to invest in a mobile-friendly site.
You can get more than enough info from this page, especially by changing the date range to the last quarter, last year + beyond to see the trends in device usage for your visitors.
But what about knowing the exact device type folks are using to look at your blog posts + pages? Google has that info for you! Head to the Tech Details tab right below the Overview to get even nerdier with your data.
This page of your GA dashboard shows the tablet + mobile devices that your site visitors use to look at your content.
If you are looking for a device to run site tests on, this would be a great way to research what the best investment would be. (But make sure you are looking at a significant pool of data + not just the last few weeks.)
It’s probably no surprise that Apple iPhone is the most popular device type for this site. I knew you nerds were my people.
More Google Analytics numbers to know
Interested in what else Google Analytics can do for you + your business? Check out the site visits article in the know your numbers series.