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Millennial mums prefer mobile – but their favourite brands let them down: study

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Millennial mums turn to their phones first when researching products – but find that mobile websites operated by their favourite brands lag behind, a new study suggests.

Digital media specialist equimedia investigated 34 websites recommended to mothers in Babycentre’s Welcome to Mums 2017 list of recommended baby products, which is based on its own survey of its readership. Equimedia found that 91% of those brands’ mobile websites performed poorly as a result of slow mobile download speeds, with only two achieving a ‘good’ rating. Amazon and Ikea were the highest-performing sites.

All except one of the sites surveyed were found to be mobile-optimised – but that didn’t correlate with speedy downloads. That’s important because previous research (TGI 2017, Q1 2013-Q1 2017) has found that 94% of millennial mums tend to browse online primarily using their mobile, and that 40% will abandon a site if it takes more than three seconds to load. Babycentre research has also found that smartphone internet access tends to increase once a woman becomes pregnant or becomes a Mum, and in the UK, mobile is the second most used device after TV – and the most used device while watching TV. There are around 3m millennial mums in the UK, says equimedia, which argues that these are shoppers that mother and baby brands need to reach.

Charlotte Summers, media planning group head at equimedia, said: “It is clear that mobile internet is the first port of call for new and expecting mums, and so you would expect that brands seeking to engage with this audience would put their mobile strategies front and centre.

“This research has revealed however, that for many of the nation’s top mums’ brands, they may be mobile optimised but their page load speeds are letting mobile browsers down. It is highly likely that these brands are seeing high bounce rates and potentially less brand engagement if they cannot crack their download speeds for busy parents. Those failing to deliver the expectations of their mobile savvy audience, will see their customers move on very quickly and potentially go to larger retailers like Amazon, where they can purchase almost anything, reducing brand loyalty for smaller independents.”

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