The State of Mobile, App and Website Development for Businesses in Australia 2022

Technology is the name of the game. The information age is in full swing and businesses are leveraging state-of-the-art digital infrastructure now more than ever before.

In the current environment, a lot of businesses are shifting their focus. Website development and app design have clearly moved to the forefront of most businesses’ minds.

Your website needs to provide an easy, efficient, and seamless customer experience to thrive in the modern economy. And, with such an emphasis on user experience, you also need to be ready for mobile. Any company today that’s “worth its salt” has a sleek, clean, cutting-edge mobile app to go along with it.

All of this fast-paced digital development begs one question: “Where does Australia fit in the overall software development picture”? Many large companies throughout the country want to know what the state of website and app development is in Australia.

Fortunately, that’s exactly what we’re going to cover here today. If you’re in the IT space, you need to read this article all the way through. By the time you’re done, you’ll have a clear picture of where web development is and where it’s headed in the future.

But, there’s a lot of information to cover, so let’s get started.

It’s no secret that having a website is an absolute necessity these days. But, building your website isn’t exactly an overnight job. If you’re not familiar with website development, it can be pretty pricey too.

The cost to build your website is worth it if it’s done right. Some businesses survive solely off their digital presence. Businesses that need a “brick and mortar” storefront are becoming much rarer these days.

In 2021, 89% of the Australian population used the internet. Need we say more? The majority of the country needs to be able to find you online. Otherwise, you’re not getting their business.

According to web developers in the area, the traditional Australian website can cost anywhere between $5,000 and $10,000 to build. When you factor that cost across all the businesses in Australia, it adds up to a lot of money being invested in web design throughout the country.

Therefore, we’d venture to say the web development industry is alive and well in Australia. And, the country only shows signs of continuing that trend.

An interesting trend is starting to emerge in the type of websites built in Australia. The large number of sites built by developers are for the e-commerce space.

Companies like Amazon and Shopify have changed the landscape of the retail space. Now, it’s easier than ever for someone to launch an e-commerce store. All they need is a Shopify account and a few clicks of their computer’s mouse.

Coming in a close second were professional websites. These would be any sites that aim to sell services or serve any other business aside from e-commerce.

The lowest number of websites built were personal websites. Examples of these types of websites would be blogging sites.

With all of the website tools available today, a good number of businesses choose to build their own websites. This isn’t too shocking because many platforms like Wix, Elementor, and WordPress offer drag-and-drop functionality and ready-made themes.

But, some industries demand more robust websites. Approximately 30% of small business owners in Australia paid for outside web development services. Those that hired a third-party web development firm paid anywhere between $1,000 and $10,000 on their website design.

For larger businesses, that cost rises dramatically. A website for a large business costs, on average, $32,000 to build in Australia. The average turnaround time for these products is about 2 months.

In addition to the numbers above, even more small business owners enlist the help of minor web development services. These are services that small business owners pay $500 or less. It’s estimated that 28% of small business owners take on development projects of this size.

If you’re keeping track, that’s around 58% of small business owners who enlist the help of third-party web development services.

What’s even more shocking is the percentage of small business owners who don’t have a website at all. In Australia, that number is approximately 38%. In today’s modern society, you’d expect that number to be much smaller. 

That’s just more evidence that the web development space is alive and well in Australia.

User experience is the key to website performance in the modern age. Everything Google is doing to tweak their algorithm is geared toward giving users the best experience possible on the platform.

As a result, your website needs to stack up in that category as well. If your web design doesn’t focus on a pleasant user experience, the chances are good that your business will get lost in the shuffle.

That isn’t just our opinion. There are trends in Australia’s web usage stats to support our claim. 

Internet users want information and they want it fast. 86% of internet uses want the products or services you sell displayed right on your homepage. They don’t want to waste time navigating through page after page of your site to find what they’re looking for.

Users also want a site that is streamlined and easy to use. It’s true that your website needs to be stunning and attractive to the eye. But, there is a point of diminishing return when it comes to your web design. If it looks amazing, but there are too many features, you may drive traffic away from your site.

Statistics show that as the number of website elements increases from 400 up to 6,000, your chances of conversion drop 95%. Too much of a good thing can hurt you. When in doubt, design moderately.

Business owners also need to worry about optimizing for mobile browsing. The main focus for mobile user experience is speed. If your page doesn’t load fast enough, you’ll lose your visitors.

As page load time increases, the probability of losing your website visitor increases exponentially. When load time increases from 1 second to just 3 seconds, your chance of a user “bouncing” goes up 32%.

As load times go higher than that the numbers get much worse. Even if your webpage only takes 5 seconds to load, you have a 95% chance of losing that website visitor. Increase that load time to 10 seconds and your chances of a user bouncing skyrocket to 123%. 

Make sure whichever mobile development company you choose is making your website speed a priority.

There are a few different reasons why users may stop engaging with your site on mobile. The first is your images.

If the images on your site aren’t loading, mobile users are likely to leave. 39% of users say they left a website because of images not loading. 39% of users also chose to leave websites because of slow loading times.

Your content also plays a role in keeping users engaged with your site. 38% of users say they left a website because of the content. The same ratio of users left both because the content was too long and because the content wasn’t visually appealing.

Now, we know what you’re thinking: “How do you make a blog article more visually appealing? It’s just words on a screen”. Well, the layout of your content is actually a big part of the overall user experience. So, when these users left because of content that wasn’t “visually appealing”, they’re really talking about the layout.

You need to put a focus on how you align your text and images. Also, users don’t like big “walls of text”. Keeping paragraphs short and to the point is a huge factor in getting visitors to actually read your content. Keeping paragraphs to 3 or 4 short, clear sentences is a good rule of thumb.

The last time we covered this topic was back in 2017. Back then, statistics showed that 90% of web traffic would come from mobile by the year 2019. That statistic may be true in certain areas, but it’s not the case when you look at worldwide usage.

Mobile devices account for about 52% of website visits globally (not including tablets). Australia accounted for 32.89 million of those internet connections. 

Over the two years from 2019 to 2021, Australian mobile internet usage grew by just 1.3%. This increase amounted to 407,000 new internet connections.

Australia does have some remote territories. People in these areas are not using the internet, most likely. But, with the internet becoming more integrated with our daily lives, internet usage in these remote parts of the country may not be far away.

By in large, Australia is a first-class country. Most of the vast expanse of Australia is well-developed. The internet usage numbers seem low for a country that’s on par with the likes of America, Canada, and the UK.

For that reason, we see a lot of potential for growth in Australia’s mobile usage and mobile development market.

Australians love their mobile apps. Our mobile app market is currently one of the largest in the world. Some of the biggest apps we’ve contributed to the marketplace are Canva, Telstra, and FatSecret.

Out of the 900,000+ app developers listed on the Google Play store, 4,651 come from Australia. These developers account for 14,160 out of the 2.88 million apps listed on Google Play.

Most of the apps developed are actual apps. 81% of mobile applications developed in Australia are apps. The other 19% are mobile games.

That 19% number, although small, is a higher percentage of mobile games than the rest of the global economy. Developers from other countries are only focusing 13% of their efforts on games.

Australians are also doing well when it comes to app downloads. As a country, they’re responsible for about 107,000 app downloads. When compared with the overall global number of approximately 208,000, you can see that Australian apps are in high demand.

One of the great global debates is iPhone vs Android. Which one is superior? Well, you can tell a lot about the popularity of each platform by where major countries release their apps.

In Australia, we’re not taking any sides! Most apps released within the country are available on both platforms. The exact statistic is 58% of apps are released on both Android and iOS. 

One of the largest areas for app growth in Australia has been the financial sector. In a 2020 report, it was found that Australians check their banking apps more than any other country in the world. Many users within the country are checking their banking apps multiple times per week.

The country as a whole has seen a 350% increase in the amount of time spent on Fintech apps since 2016.

After finance, the next industry affected were food and beverage apps. Usage of these types of apps increased 300% in the two years from 2016 to 2018. The only country to use these apps more during this period was France.

Deliveroo, Uber Eats, and Menulog were a few of the main culprits of this explosion in usage.

After food and drink, the next highest performers were travel and map apps. Although, their growth was modest compared to the first two industry sectors. Travel apps only saw growth of around 80% in Australia. 

That’s a significant amount of growth! It just seems small in comparison to the over 300% growth in Fintech and food and beverage.

An interesting trend in app usage time is emerging in Australia. It’s true that we’re a country that loves our app. But, you wouldn’t be able to tell from our usage time.

In relation to other countries in the world, our usage time is down. In 2018, the average global mobile user spent 3 hours on their phone. Australians, on the other hand, only spent an average of 2.5 hours browsing their mobile devices.

In terms of app usage, Indonesia takes the cake. Their mobile users spent an average of 4 hours on the phone. That’s almost 17% of their entire day spent browsing!

Things seem to be trending up for website development in Australia. All of the numbers seem to be on the rise. There’s a lot of room for website developers to grow, as well.

Most businesses will need apps as we push forward in this digital age. The team at EB Pearls is your premier website development company. Whether it’s a mobile app or e-commerce website development project, we’ve got your back.

Contact us today to discuss your project. We’re more than happy to help you make your vision become a reality.