Tag: mobile commerce trends

In India, the vast majority of consumers are turning to m-commerce to buy their products and services online.

E-commerce has always been somewhat unpredictable in India, but Indian mobile shopping appears to be taking off with a vengeance. For instance, despite the fact that Flipkart broke the 100 million user mark two months ago, its valuation recently fell by another 38 percent.

That said, while online shopping may be somewhat unstable, mobile commerce looks much more steady.

Current Indian mobile shopping trends suggest that the market will bring in $48 billion in 2020. Furthermore, recent Regalix research indicates that 83 percent of Indian consumers prefer to use their smartphones. This makes m-commerce the most popular online shopping channel in the country.

The same research showed that mobile commerce users in India are primarily within certain age groups. Interestingly, people between the ages of 25 and 34 years were more likely to use their smartphones to shop than those from 18 to 24 years old. In fact, 90 percent of online shoppers in that first age category prefer mobile.

Overall, Indian mobile shopping statistics show that 1 in 3 people in the country is shopping with a smartphone.

The Regalix report showed that exactly one third – 33 percent – of shoppers in India shop over mobile commerce at least one time per month. This option provides them with a broad spectrum of options and allows for convenient price comparison no matter where the consumer happens to be.

Another 28 percent of Indian shoppers shop even more frequently than that, once per week. One in four consumers – 25 percent – shop over mobile phone at least once per three months. Only 14 percent of participants said they shopped online over their mobile devices once per year.

One noteworthy Indian mobile shopping trend pointed out by the Regalix report had to do with who was shopping. Men appeared to be using mobile phones to shop more than women. Forty four percent of women were shopping at least once per month over mobile. At the same time, 63 percent of men were buying products and services over their smartphones.

An Adobe report has indicated that mobile shopping could be a great deal more but retailers are holding back.

While retail m-commerce has been moving forward, according to Adobe, it could be doing a great deal better. The firm’s data from Europe showed that traffic to retailer sites isn’t reaching its potential.

Europe saw an increase of 54 percent year over year in its mobile retail traffic from smartphones.

Adobe published its European retail m-commerce data in its 2016 Mobile Retail Report. Beyond traffic, smartphone based shopping has also led to an 89 percent increase in its revenue growth since last year. This is far greater than the increase in revenue growth experienced via desktop – at 8 percent – and tablets – at 10 percent.

Still, as much as the growth in revenues is significant, mobile commerce conversions aren’t nearly great enough to balance the slipping growth rates in the use of tablets and desktops. Europe saw a consistent increase in smartphone traffic throughout Europe. However, the average retailer experienced very little overall online traffic growth.

The boost in retail m-commerce isn’t actually driving up the use of online shopping overall.

On average, European retailers saw a year over year traffic increase of only 3 percent when taking all channels into account. Tablet traffic slid by 8 percent and desktop traffic fell by 7 percent. The smartphone growth rate was by far the highest but it was not adequate to make up for what was lost over other devices.

That said, the online retail revenue growth rate was healthy at 13 percent over last year. This was primarily built on the foundation of desktop purchases, which continue to represent the vast majority of online purchases.

Desktops brought in 74 percent of total online revenue, despite the fact that they represent a notably lower 58 percent of traffic. Clearly, the conversion rate over desktop is significantly higher than over other devices.

Smartphone retail m-commerce represented 12 percent of total online revenue but 27 percent of the traffic to retail sites across Europe. The average order value over desktop was also far greater than over smartphones. In that area, desktop outperformed smartphones by a sizeable 25 percent.