In 2015, 52 percent of small and medium-sized businesses in Europe had mobile-optimized websites. While the concept of a responsive website might not be the number one priority for micro enterprises, large retailers take advantage of the opportunity to optimize the performance of their e-commerce sites. In the UK alone, the share of multi-channel retailers with mobile-optimized websites grew by nearly 30 percent from 2012 to 2015. In Italy, roughly 60 percent of 2,500 companies had a mobile-optimized website in 2015. A year later in 2016, research on digital performance revealed the high level of mobile adoption among major B2C and B2B companies in the Nordic countries. According to the study, nearly all of the surveyed companies in Sweden, Norway and Finland had a mobile-optimized website, with roughly 70 to 90 percent offering iOS and Android apps.
At industry level, mobile performance in Europe varies by country and by industry. In Sweden and Finland, local evaluation from the year 2016 shows that telecommunications and media industries excel in the utilization of mobile channels. A year earlier in Italy, IT companies led the way in mobile optimization among the 2,500 surveyed websites in the country.
From an online retailer’s perspective, European mobile users have come to expect certain features from a website. In 2015, responsiveness to screen size was one of the most desired features of an e-commerce site in the Benelux countries. Additionally, approximately 60 percent of online shoppers from both the Benelux and the Nordic countries stated that they would leave a website which they could not browse on a mobile device without difficulty. In France, a recent report showed a correlation between the level of optimization and the conversion rate in mobile retail. According to the report, the conversion rate for mobile-optimized websites was more than double the corresponding figure for non-optimized and even mobile-usable websites. At the same time, similar correlation between optimized and non-optimized sites was reported in Germany.
