The holiday and Christmas shopping season left the company’s previous accomplishments in the dust.
Shop Direct has recently revealed that is was one of the many online retailers that experienced a massive mobile commerce success over the last holiday shopping season, as its Very.co.uk and Littlewoods.com websites saw considerable surges in searches and purchases from smartphones and tablets.
This is being seen as further evidence that British shoppers are accepting mcommerce on a growing basis.
The trading update from Shop Direct said that its mobile commerce sales saw an increase by 64 percent over the six weeks that led up to December 27. Chief executive of the company, Alex Baldock, said that sales over smartphones and tablets had “exploded” in the weeks and days that led up to Christmas.
Overall, mobile commerce makes up 43 percent of the total online sales at Shop Direct’s sites.
Baldock also added that “By 2015, we expect every transaction to involve a mobile device at some point in the customer journey.” He stated that it is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this online shopping trend, and “we mean to stay on top of it.”
Shop Direct is a company that is owned by Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay. They are also the owners of the massive Telegraph Media Group. They have revealed that they will be making a tremendous investment of £100 million toward the mobile development and digital business. A prime focus within this effort will be on personalizing their site, email marketing and digital applications.
During that same six week period, the company reported that their overall sales increased by 5 percent. This is an acceleration in its growth when compared to what it had been experiencing over the entire second half of the year, which was at 1percent.
There were a number of contributing factors to this growth, including the performance over mobile commerce, as well as the newer brands of the company, isme.com and Very.co.uk, which experienced a considerable sales increase of 27 percent. One interesting point was that in the weeks before Christmas, the company was selling one onesie every 35 seconds.
During the 2012 holiday season, retailers were exposed to the potential success they could find through a focus on mobile commerce. The 2013 holiday season solidified the faith that companies had been putting behind mobile commerce. Now, retailers are beginning to flock to the mobile space, seeking out companies like E-Complish to help make them more accommodating to mobile consumers by embracing mobile payments.