Not a day goes by when we do not see somebody launching a website that is "mobile phone friendly." The latest is to be "iPhone friendly." So, are that many people looking for apartments on a cell phone?
Here are the stats: According to comScore, Inc., a leader in measuring the digital world, over 63 million Americans use a mobile device to access the internet for news and information.
Now, that sounds pretty interesting on the surface, it makes me want to run out and build a mobile website! However, now we need to break this down deeper. How many of these people are really going to hit your website on their phone for an apartment.
So, using some math (bare with me – I majored in cheerleaders), according to some data floating around from Uncle Sam – 32% of the population (299-million+) rent housing. Of this 44% live in buildings of more than 5 attached units (our people I assume). So now I have about 33-million residents for the sake of roundness, and Uncle Sam states 16-million of that makes a "Renter Household." I tried to use cheerleader 101 math on it, but it does not make sense – so give up now!
We are now counting ourselves into some third dimension or something. There are tons of mathematical questions that we would need to enlist the help of numerous bean counters to assist us in this task. So, using the math from our "I can't count money" government, how many of these potential apartment seekers are hitting you up on a Mobile?
Well, now you get into income levels, how many people have web-enabled mobile phones? Then enter the iPhone; which has an amazing web usage rate over other mobile devices. That Steve Jobs – love his stuff! But the iPhone is to render a normal website into it, so do I still need to build a mobile one?
In searching for an answer to this daunting question (it keeps me awake at night) I looked to all the big ILS guys that have throw up a mobile site. Yes, they all use different math, based on theories from how many people hit Facebook.com from a mobile to internal research and the growth of mobile phone usage. Yet, no real answer – my head will explode soon!
What we need is some stats – how many searches are coming via mobile phones seeking apartments. I cannot find any actual data on usage, only data to justify building mobile websites. Somebody count this please!
My head hurts now – no wonder I never liked math!