Tag: tablet commerce

Report sheds light on the evolution of the Internet and mobile commerce

comScore, a leading Internet analytics company, has released the latest edition of its annual report detailing emerging Internet Trends. The 2013 U.S. Digital Future in Focus report sheds light on how the Internet is changing and how these changes are affecting the way it is used by consumers. Notably, the Internet is becoming more mobile, due to the widespread proliferation of smartphones and tablets, as well as the expanding availability of high-speed mobile networks that facilitate a constant connection to the Internet. Mobile commerce is also featured in the new report.

Consumers beginning to favor mobile search

According to comScore, consumer search behavior is changing. General purpose search engine queries declined by 3% from 2011 to 2012, with the number of consumers moving toward vertical search sites and mobile search applications growing. Consumers are becoming more direct with their searches, as well, focusing on things that are more specific to their interests, such as finding restaurants that serve a particular type of food rather than just restaurants in general.

Mobile everything is becoming more important

The report shows that the mobile Internet is becoming more important. Smartphones now outnumber feature phones for the first time in the history of mobile technology. Digital media is beginning to migrate away from favoring desktop computers to catering to the needs of mobile consumers. Online companies are beginning to address the demands of mobile consumers by providing them with mobile commerce services, engaging them in mobile marketing campaigns, and providing them access to new applications that make it easier to find the products and information they are interested in.

Mobile commerce adoption is accelerating

The report highlights the growing interest consumers are showing in mobile commerce as well. The concept of mobile commerce has proven attractive for many because of the convenience it conveys. comScore notes that the adoption of mobile commerce is accelerating and may soon come to dominate the mobile space. The report also suggests that mobile commerce will have a profound impact on traditional brick-and-mortar stores in the future as consumers begin to favor online shopping.

Final quarter data has now revealed that nearly a quarter of its online sales were over mobile devices.

QVC has become the latest believer in the success available through m-commerce as it saw an exceptionally strong performance over that channel in the last quarter of 2012.

This represented an increase of 60 percent in its sales over smartphones and tablets.

The QVC parent company, Liberty Interactive Corp., which was listed in the seventh place among the Top 500 for 2012 as identified by Internet Retailer, saw a considerable year end on December 31. According to the statistics included in its recently released report, its revenue had increased overall by 4.2 percent, bringing its total to $10.01 billion. This was an increase over its 2011 total of $9.61 billion.

While QVC saw its overall web performance rise, it was m-commerce that became the true star last year.

The American web sales for the company rose by approximately 10.9 percent, reaching $2.23 billion, when compared to the $2.01 billion from the year before. Its international web sales were not broken down by channel within this report. It did note that its total sales increased by 2.9 percent to $8.51 billion when compared to 2011’s $8.27 billion. Its international sales were up by just shy of that amount, 2.4 percent, reaching $2.93 billion from having been $2.86 billion the year before.

Forty percent of QVC’s American sales for the year were the result of online shoppers, which was a year over year rise of 37.1 percent. In the last quarter, online sales represented 42.7 percent of the total, which was a big jump from the 39.7 percent in the last quarter of 2011.

Where things were truly explosive, though, were in m-commerce in the last quarter. The sales in that channel grew by 109.3 percent in 2012 to reach $175.6 million. In 2011, that figure had been $83.9 million. Last year the mobile sales made up 22.6 percent of all of the online purchases, which was a tremendous leap over the 11.8 percent that they represented in 2011.

Clearly, 2012 was a defining year for m-commerce at QVC, which is bound to continue to push through this channel throughout 2013.