Surprising SimilarWeb Stats: 1 in 4 Visits to SecondLife.com Are Mobile; More Visits from YouTube, Than Facebook

SimilarWeb's report on traffic and usage of Secondlife.com includes some surprising stats on top of the visits by country I posted last week. While most of the traffic (66%) is direct and Second Life is a PC/Mac-only client, a large chunk of the visitors are on mobile -- take a look at the deep dive data at right, generously shared with me by SimilarWeb Marketing Solutions: Roughly 1 in 4 visits are via mobile, running between low 20s to low 30s by percentage and country -- with the largest audience by far, from the United States, visiting via mobile 1 out of 3 times.

This is a major reason that Second Life usage has been stagnant: Since the account creation and installation process is so desktop-focused, some 25% of potential new users are likely to see their efforts confused or frustrated right off the bat. It also contributes to the attrition of established users unable to easily access their account via iPhone and Android -- the lack of an app just becomes another reason to switch attention to other, easier to access interactive experiences. (It's all the more reason it's stunning that Linden Lab is only now creating an iOS "companion app" for Second Life -- roughly 12 years after the iPhone launched.)

For SL merchants and other content creators, this data stresses the need to have a mobile strategy, at least in terms of having a web page optimized for iOS/Android users.

Another surprising SimilarWeb datapoint is traffic via social media. While Facebook tends to dominate traffic to other media sites, with Twitter a close second, SecondLife.com social traffic a quite different:

YouTube draws a bit more traffic than Facebook, while Twitter scarcely registers. Which is another lesson for both Linden Lab and SL merchants: If you're not active on YouTube, you're missing much of your potential audience.

Hat tip to Reven Rosca on the social media point!

Comments

[Zoey Mara]

or just maybe a lot of those mobile hits are from people like me going on to my account through mobile to check whose online , check my land, pay my account , ect while im away from home.Im actually on the SL site a lot on mobile for the above reasons and a few more. those numbers dont actually mean ohh we missing new people cause they use mobile. I can almost say a lot of those people from mobile are people like me just checking our accounts. all thought a app for phones would be good , but mostly just for chat cause it will have no where near the graphics and access that you can get on a computer. Not all games are made for mobile actually most arent unless its mobile focused from the beginning but a lot do have companion apps that allow you to chat or mess with your inventory or buy money while away from your computer such as warframe , World of warcraft but those apps dont actually let you play the game on them well because it wouldnt work just like SL in most part wouldn't work , Building would be no existent, doing anything outside of sitting around and talking would be pretty much non existent , it would be a chat app not used by new players but by the exisiting players when away from home so they can keep in contact.

[Leonel Morgado]

BTW, it's about time NWN allows mobile browsers to resize or reflow the text - it's the only site I visit that imposes desktop resolutions when visited on Android mobile phones.

[Samanthaatkins]

Visiting the web site is not being in SL. To the best of my knowledge there is not a real viewer for mobile. There was a third party text only one for a while but it was stopped by LL. And you certainly can't visit by YouTube.

Now there is some stuff out there that hasn't fully landed yet to render SL and video games in the cloud making super light weight clients possible. But that is in the future.

[Samanthaatkins]

BTW, both Firestorm and Singularity viewers work on Linux as well as on Windows and Macs.

[sweet valentine]

Lumiya is a graphics based mobile...and LL been talking about mobile again

[kitty revolver]

a mobile marketplace app would be fab

[Hamlet Au]

"it's the only site I visit that imposes desktop resolutions when visited on Android mobile phones."

Ugh, sorry about that, Leonel! It optimizes for iPhone Safari -- what browser are you using? Able to try Safari on your Android?

[Amanda]

I think all the visitors from Youtube supports Zoey Mara's comment that much of the mobile traffic is current users checking on things. It's the type of site that people will be looking at then decide to check who's on SL right now.