Many companies use these guidelines and mobile-specific code like Wireless Markup Language or HTML5 to optimize websites for viewing on mobile devices.
- a traditional web analytics solution could range from fairly accurate to mostly inaccurate, depending on where the HTTP requests are coming from.
As a result, some mobile web analytics solutions only detect or count user visits per day.
The best solutions provide reliable, persistent, and unique user identities, allowing accurate measurement of repeat visits and long-term customer loyalty.
HTTP referrer information showing where a visitor navigated from is generally not provided for mobile web browsing.
This is either because the device manufacturer has disabled sending such information in the HTTP request to save bandwidth during network usage, or because the mobile network operator's internet gateway removes or alters the original HTTP header due to the gateway software or use of mobile web transcoding software.
In some cases, image caching on handsets is performed regardless of any anti-caching headers output by the remote server.
For desktop web browsing, the network address of the client machine usually gives some form of user identification and location.
For mobile web browsing, the client IP address refers to the internet gateway machine owned by the network operator.
For devices such as the BlackBerry or for phones using Opera Mini browser software, the IP address refers to an operator-owned internet gateway machine in Canada or Norway.
The level of information recorded from these transmissions depends on the architecture provided by the supplier, and not all image beacon solutions are the same.