Yesterday I sent out a newsletter for another website, and when looking at the stats, what surprised me the most was the percentage of people who open the email on their mobile devices.

Eighty-one percent of those who opened the email were on a mobile device. Twelve percent were on desktop, with the remaining opening the email in a webmail platform.

I don’t follow the theory to develop for mobile-first, but I test each page of a website on a smartphone and tablet. All of my websites are created with Divi, which you can easily switch from desktop to tablet and then to mobile. While the views in each one of the stages have gotten better, I still find you need to look at them on an actual device. Especially a tablet.

I can’t believe how many websites I go to on my iPad Air 4, holding it vertically and say, “Did anyone look at this?” I prefer having my iPad vertical, and the problem for the company is, nine times out of ten, instead of switching the iPad horizontally, I leave the website.

Another surprising statistic

As I mentioned in my last article, I’ve never been consistent about writing blog posts on my websites. Part of the reason is I never know what to write.

Yesterday, I decided it was way past time to get something on my website, 3 lovable labs; after all, the holidays are just around the corner, and I wanted people to start thinking about their cards.

My topic was part sad, and part feels good. I wrote about how and why a year ago we had to say goodbye to the third member of our 3 lovable labs team Hank. I also introduce them to our newest lab, Koda.

I wasn’t sure how people would receive; I didn’t want to sound like a pitty piece, but much to my surprise, my open rate was thirty-eight percent, and the click-through rate was fifteen percent. Not bad since the people on this list hadn’t heard from me in four months.

As a bonus, the story about Hank brought some engagement with my readers.

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