Nearly a quarter of visits to council websites are from mobiles shows Socitm data

22 Apr 2013 01:34 PM

Nearly a quarter of visits to council websites are now from mobile devices, according to data from Socitm's Website Performance service (formerly Website take-up service).

The finding is in line with the experience of the Government Digital Service, that recently reported visits from mobiles to the GOV.UK site had been running at around 20% in the run up to Christmas, jumping to nearly 25% in the New Year - a change they said had also been noted by the BBC.

Socitm's Website Performance service collects data from council website vistors through a pop-up survey and is used by more than 100 local authorities to monitor usage and satisfaction with council websites.

The service, which has been running since 2004, collects up to 25,000 surveys a month from council website users, and since January 2013 has run a version of the survey for mobile users (including those using tablets, smartphones and other mobile phones).

The survey detects use of mobile device and offers the user a cut-down version of the main Website take-up service survey. Data for the first three months suggests that the percentage of visits to council websites from mobile devices is 23%. In total, a monthly average of just under 2,000 responses (9% of all Website take-up survey responses) came from mobile devices.

The data shows that reasons for visiting websites differ for users on the move, with schools/youth (16%), rubbish & recycling (15%) and leisure (10%) the most popular services to use from mobiles. Planning and council tax are less popular services to visit from mobiles, while housing and libraries feature higher in mobile rankings for use than than they do in the desktop rankings.