Mobile commerce expected to enhance the holiday season
Mobile commerce is expected to play a major role in the upcoming holiday season. Last year, consumers around the world made use of their smartphones and tablets to purchase gifts during the auspicious season. This lead to a spike in retail sales and helped prove the promise of mobile commerce to companies that had been on the fence concerning their engagement with mobile consumers in the past. In countries like Australia, mobile commerce may help make the upcoming holiday season one of the most profitable for retailers.
Consumers with little time to shop favor mobile commerce
Consumers are beginning to favor mobile commerce for a wide range of reasons. Many praise the convenience associated with mobile commerce platforms. Others favor these platforms because they have little personal time to go shopping for products. Through a smartphone and tablet, these people can shop online and make purchases at their leisure. While the mobile commerce field has been plagued with security issues over the past few years, these issues have not yet become enough to dissuade consumers from participating in this field.
Mobile traffic is on the rise
In a recent study released by Monetate, a marketing research firm, almost one-third of online traffic to retail sites on Christmas Day came from tablets and smartphones. Mobile traffic is continuing to rise, as well, even beyond the holiday season. IBM Smarter Commerce notes that more than 30% of online traffic to retail sites now comes from mobile devices as of the third quarter of this year.
Retailers begin taking matters into their own hands
In the wake of the 2012 holiday season, many retailers made efforts to make themselves more accommodating to mobile commerce in general. This meant improving their online infrastructure systems in order to better support traffic coming from mobile devices. Many retailers have also opted to develop their own mobile commerce platforms in order to better engage consumers.
Social commerce growing more popular in the digital world
Mobile commerce has become a well documented trend around the world. Many people know and understand what mobile commerce is about, even if many people have yet to participate in this emerging field. A relatively unknown facet of this sector, however, is beginning to attract more attention, largely due to its connection to social networking. So called social commerce is quickly becoming a powerful trend in the digital world, heavily supported by the strong growth that social networks like Pinterest have seen in recent years.
Report suggests that Pinterest is a powerful social commerce platform
Pinterest is one of the fastest growing social networks in the world today. The social network has successfully attracted millions of users from around the world, most of whom use the platform regularly. Pinterest is not only growing as a social network, of course, as it is also quickly establishing itself as the leading platform for social commerce. A recent report from Monetate suggests that Pinterest is responsible for directing a massive amount of online traffic to e-commerce sites throughout the first quarter of this year and during the holiday season of 2012.
Social network directs consumers to e-commerce sites
The report shows that Pinterest holds the highest average order value among other social networks concerning social media referrers. This translates into revenue generated for the social network for all the traffic it directs to e-commerce sites. While Pinterest has shown itself to be a powerful social commerce platform, the report notes that the social network can improve its approach to the matter in order to generate more revenue from this space. A stronger focus on mobile commerce may serve well in this endeavor.
Social networks could aid growth of mobile commerce
Social networking sites have been a strong boon for the mobile commerce field. These sites are already heavily trafficked by consumers that use their mobile devices for just about everything. Sites that can successfully direct this traffic to e-commerce sites are helping spread the reach of mobile commerce services and making consumers more comfortable with the concept of mobile payments.
