Tag: mobile shopping trends

While the iPhone has always been the top smartphone for shoppers, its share is declining.

Traditionally – if one can use that word in the young world of mobile commerce – the largest number of sales have, by far, come from iPhones and iPads, whose owners have made far more and far larger purchases over their mobile devices than their Android gadget using counterparts.

However, this trend is shifting and over the last year, Android has gained a lot of ground in m-commerce sales.

In fact, recent data that was used in a report put out by BI Intelligence has shown that Android is rapidly closing the mobile commerce sales share gap in a number of different ways. The report examined a number of the trends that have occurred since the last holiday shopping season and has discovered that there have been notable changes in the average order value (AOV), the conversion rate, and the order share when it comes to mobile devices on these two most popular platforms.

These mobile commerce trends are important as they help to guide marketers and retailers in targeting their experiences.

The report indicated that Android is closing the m-commerce sales gap quite quickly. Among the ways in which serious changes were made over the last year are the following:

• Average order value – The average AOV over Android phone was $120, which was much closer to the average iPhone order at $129. The gap between tablets didn’t appear to shrink in any meaningful way.
• Conversion rate – Monetate stats showed that there was a 0.7 percent conversion rate with Android visitors, which was lower than the iPhone rate of 0.9 percent, but that was much closer than last year.
• Order share – About one in five sales on the Custora m-commerce platform was from Android based devices, a notable increase, particularly as the share from iPhones dropped at the same time.

The mobile commerce report also indicated that as Android becomes a more important commercial platform, it is not only taking a larger share of the space previously occupied by iOS based devices, but it was also seen to have been taking up more of online shopping as a whole.

Whether retailers are ready or not, smartphone is going to have a considerable impact on consumers.

As is the case every year, holiday shoppers in 2014 will be looking to find the very best deals, and mobile commerce will be playing a very important part in that, regardless of whether or not the actual purchase is made over smartphones and tablets.

A growing number of pre-holiday survey results are starting to be released and they show that consumers want m-commerce.

One of the top consumer desires has been shown to be the ability to use their devices in order to price products and look for deals. Mobile commerce is more than simply making an online purchase through the use of a smartphone or tablet. According to a Google Consumer Surveys study that was conducted on behalf of Thinknear and that involved the participation of 1,000 adults in the United States, one in every three holiday shoppers plans to use a their devices to check prices.

Even before a shopper leaves his or her home to hit the stores, mobile commerce will play an important role.

The recent survey showed the following activities for which consumers expect to use their mobile devices during the upcoming holiday shopping season:

• Price comparisons (32 percent)
• Researching ideas for gifts (31 percent)
• Reading product reviews (27 percent)
• Looking for deals such as sales and coupons (25 percent)
• Creating a shopping list (22 percent)

These are very interesting statistics and reflect the type of behavior among consumers that retailers are going to want to take very seriously if they want to be able to get the most out of the holiday shopping season.

These results also reflect those that were revealed within the American Express Spending and Savings Tracker study that had been conducted by Ebiquity. Within that research, it was shown that the leading activities to be expected in online and mobile commerce during the holidays will be price comparisons, checking out ideas for gifts, and locating the best deals. These studies showed that these activities may be conducted before leaving to shop, or could occur while in store.