Small screens over bigger ones

Community
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I know very well stats by google search aren’t too reliable, but it gives one metric more to wonder. This I got:

  • computer, aka. big screens: 14 %
  • mobiles: 83 %
  • tablets: 2 %

If I’m looking for other long period statics from my servers big screens are around 10 % and mobiles take 90 % of visits where that information is available (sure, part of those are false and from bots, but I count only domestic traffic because my sites aren’t global and therefore it eliminates bots guite good; there isn’t many bots using finnish IPs). Tablets, and specially iPads, are really rare and practically not exist.

For me and when specially at northern europe that is not any suprise. Phones bypasses laptops etc. years ago in sales and uses. Most of so called ordinary people don’t use traditionally computers any more.

That has been situation in second and third world a while and now are first world following (sorry, I don’t know what are suitable terms in english, but we are using those here up in north).

My point is that is the reason why I’m so often nagging when UI/UX are planned for bic screens just because of devs and other IT guys are using ser of three 21 inch screens :wink: At here not even big corporate CEOs aren’t using big screens any more for pleasure, leisure and work stuff — unless there is need to excel, powerpoint etc., well, you know.

Discourse itself works quite good on smaller screens. Big hand and points for that. Third party solutions are different story every now and then. But generally speaking — there is strong tendency, and that seems to bother open source for some reason (well,I know the reason: money) to do minimum regarding small screens, and put all effort to wide screens — even those are minority.

It shows here sometimes too. How we can put hunders of categories into sidebar and using those as only navigation… fak sake, don’t do that, because it is hidious solution for everyone and crime against UX, but specially it brakes everything on mobiles.

Same error what we see on almost every WordPress — tons of widgets on sidebar and no one on mobiles sees those because those are visible under main content. All those widgets makes that site just slow and heavy.

But I’m interested to hear what is part of mobile users on your forum? Sure, it is niche dependent thing and I would guess more coding/dev-oriented forums have lesser amount mobile users. And have you ever asked what is the experience of mobile users?

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10% mobile for me, judging by the two Admin reports “User Visits” and “User Visits (mobile)” - my population skews towards older, and towards people in technology.

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76% desktop, 20% mobile, 5% tablet for me from Google Analytics.

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From my experience in a few different Communities on different platforms, it is really dependant on your audience. For example, if you are a support community site for a web-based software, you’re more likely to get desktop views. Where if you are more of a community that is focused on connections and not tied to a particular company/product, you might be more likely to have a higher mobile count. All this to say, generalizations on data like this can be hard, as there are many other factors that can go into what device people use to visit a community.

For the community that I manage, we are primarily desktop - 97% over the last 30 days, and 96.5% YTD. We are also tied to a product that is primarily accessed on a desktop as well, so it makes sense.

Imho - if you are looking for more fuel to the fire on this for internal discussions, I would recommend using the data you have today to tell your story, and ensure that any experiences that do get built/created for your Community are responsive and inclusive of all screen sizes.

We did a redesign earlier this year, and mobile was something we were aware of and took into account, but due to our circumstances/data, we primarily focused on the desktop experience.

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