Mobile Optimisation Research

Since 2018 MRS has been facilitating an annual research project to explore the impact that poor mobile design and lack of mobile optimisation has on participation, completion, and response rates in research.  

In an unprecedented project of collaboration four panel companies - Dynata, Kantar, Lucid and Toluna – have been working with MRS giving access to their response rate data to identify trends in participation and response rates. 

Drawing from the research and the experiences of the four companies, MRS has produced some best practice recommendations to help practitioners to produce better mobile design, increase optimisation and to improve completion and response rates. This guidance is supported by the US Insights Association and The Research Society in Australia.

The results from the 2019, 2020 and 2021 research are available as webinars via the following links:

Mobile optimisation research 2019 webinar 

Mobile optimisation research 2020 webinar

Mobile optimisation research 2021 webinar

Looking at the data across the five years of data that has been gathered there is a clear upward trend across all countries, ages and genders:

• Female mobile phone starts have grown from 27.1% in 2016 to 42.8% in 2020, similarly men have grown from 20.9% to 33.1%.
• Female mobile phone completes have grown from 19.9% in 2016 to 41.9% in 2020, and men have grown from 14.8% to 32%
• Across all age bands mobile phone starts and completes have grown e.g., for the 60+ phone completes has grown from 7.5% five years ago to 18.1% in 2020 and for the 18–24-year-old phone completed have grown from 31% to 51.6%.
• Across all countries mobile phone starts and completes have grown e.g., phone completes in China have grown from 9.4% to 28.6% over the five years to 2020 and for Brazil the change is even larger from 12.8% in 2016 to 48.8% in 2020.

Work is underway preparing the research for 2022, which will be presented via an online webinar later in the autumn.