One thing I like to ponder sometimes is how many of you are reading this blog on a computer and how many are reading on a mobile.
So I carried out a survey earlier in the week, using a stats package to check on type of device and screen size throughout the day. I chose to do my survey on July 31st, a day with a fairly standard post about Jane Austen published at the normal time of 7am.
Here's how the first half hour measured up. Almost half of the 138 people viewing the post were on their mobile, one in five were on a tablet and only a third were using a computer.
7-7.30am
mobile
48%
tablet
20%
computer
33%
That surprised me.
I thought this might set the pattern for the day, but no, absolutely not.
During the next half hour, and the next, the number of people turning up to read the blog remained roughly constant. But the proportion of readers using each type of device changed dramatically as the morning went on, with mobile use dropping and computer use climbing until the situation was reversed.
7-7.30am
7.30-8am
8-8.30am
8.30-9am
9-9.30am
9.30-10am
mobile
48%
42%
33%
25%
31%
20%
tablet
20%
16%
14%
15%
9%
11%
computer
33%
42%
53%
61%
60%
68%
Here's what I think might have been going on. At 7am many of this blog's audience are either in bed or on the move, so reading via a computer isn't an option. If you want to read the day's post when it's fresh, you grab the closest device to hand. But as breakfast beckons and the working day begins, it becomes easier to read the day's post on a bigger screen and mobile use drops back. Also you can generally rely on this blog not to serve up obscenities which might contravene workplace IT policy, so you don't need to slink off and read it on your phone instead.
I kept up my survey for the rest of the day, and this graph shows the results, hour by hour.
After a brief spell of mobile domination at the start of the day, the computer quickly slipped into a comfortable lead. Throughout the working day the proportion of readers using a computer stayed fairly constant at 60%, only starting to fall back around 5pm. At the same time mobile usage started to climb from a steady daytime baseline of 30%, until it overtook computers again in the middle of the evening. Use of tablets was fairly low during the day but rose from 10% to 20% during the evening, suggesting that tablets are more of a leisuretime medium. But the computer screen never went away, and its proportion dipped no lower than one-third in the late evening.
Overall, across an entire 24 hour period, the proportion of readers using each medium was as follows.
7am-7am
mobile
33%
tablet
14%
computer
54%
Which suggests just over half of you read diamond geezer on a desktop or laptop, one in seven of you use a tablet and a third of you drop by on your mobile. It may be 2019 but the computer is still king, for readers of this blog at least. My thanks to you all for turning up however you arrive... but especially to those battling through on your mobile with its teeny tiny screen, because I don't make it easy for you.
n.b. You may feel the need to tell us that you read the blog at 7.01am on your computer, or how you always get your mobile out at 11am, but remember that what you do is not important - you are merely a single data point in the overall pattern.
n.b. 80% of this blog's readers live in the UK and another 10% live in a NW European timezone, which is why the data we've seen so closely matches the British working day. You may feel the need to tell us you live in Australia and this is not how your day pans out, or how you live in America and always wake up to a fresh post on your mobile in the middle of our afternoon, but your experience is merely background noise, sorry.
