Mobile visits to Allrecipes.com the week leading up to Thanksgiving Day were up 97 percent year-over-year, pointing to how home cooks are leveraging smartphones in the kitchen.

The growing penetration of smartphones is changing how home cooks access online recipes. Increasingly, home cooks are eschewing searching on a desktop computer and then moving to the kitchen with a printed recipe in favor of leveraging mobile devices in the kitchen while cooking, per Allrecipes.com.

?The media consumption habits of busy, family-focused women have shifted greatly over the past few years due to the strong adoption of smartphones and tablets,? said Esmee Williams, vice president of brand marketing for Allrecipes, Seattle.

?Visits to Allrecipes.com from mobile devices now account for 40 percent of total traffic to Allrecipes.com ? up from just 8 percent a year ago,? she said.

?Mobile food-focused sites and apps provide shoppers with unparalleled convenience so that they can get the meal-planning information and resources they need to make purchase decisions whenever and wherever needed, whether it be on the go, in-store or at home.?

Cooks embrace mobile
Allrecipes celebrated its biggest Thanksgiving ever with the day before Thanksgiving its busiest traffic day ever based on 7.9 million visits from home cooks.

During the week leading up to Thanksgiving Day, mobile visits to Allrecipes.com totaled 12 million, up 97 percent. A recently launched Video Cookbook app for Windows 8 and iOS saw nearly 20,000 unique visitors.

Additionally, nearly 4 million home cooks visited Allrecipes from a tablet device, a 232 percent increase year-over-year.

Allrecipes also reports that video views jumped 200 percent as home cooks viewed instructional videos on the Web, mobile devices and internet TVs.

The busiest hour for traffic was between 3 and 4 p.m. PT, an hour later than in past years, pointing to the growing use of mobile devices in the kitchen.

?Mobile devices offer consumers unprecedented convenience, connecting them to exactly what they need at the moment they need it ? from price comparison to digital shopping lists,? Ms. Williams said.

?An interesting shift we found this Thanksgiving was the peak traffic hour between 3-4 p.m. Pacific,? she said. ?This is an hour later than past years and further illustrates the growing mobile trend as home cooks are also using their mobile devices while cooking.?

Multichannel behavior
As consumer behavior continues to shift into the digital and mobile space, brands and publishers need to understand how and where their consumers are using mobile devices in order to provide timely and relevant content, per Ms. Williams.

Allrecipes is part of Meredith Corp. and operates 18 Web sites, 18 mobile sites, 11 mobile apps and 14 ebooks.

?We found that our community of home cooks uses different devices at different times throughout their meal planning, shopping and cooking experience, and we have optimized our branded content and mobile products to deliver unmatched utility and seamless access,? Ms. Williams said.

?For example, a home cook may start off on a desktop computer to research recipe ideas, then access their shopping list from their smartphone while in-store, and finally watch a how-to cooking video from the new Allrecipes Video Cookbook app on their tablet while in the kitchen,? she said.

Final Take
Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Marketer, New York