Author: Lucy

UK mobile commerce up on Boxing Day, says IBM

| January 7, 2014

The day after Christmas, has shown to be very important to shopping in the United Kingdom, yet again.

Boxing Day, the day that follows Christmas, has long been a very important shopping day for finding great discounts and sales, and IBM has revealed that this tradition continued, but this year it was breaking records in UK mobile commerce.

The IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark showed that sales skyrocketed compared to 2012.

Among the findings from IBM in its Digital Analytics Benchmark was that a great deal of the Boxing Day shopping on retail websites came from UK mobile commerce locations. This suggests that smartphones and tablets are rapidly becoming one of the preferred methods of browsing and comparison shopping for British consumers. In fact, smartphones were found to be the most popular device for browsing for products and sales.

Though online shopping is still dominated by PCs, UK mobile commerce is rapidly growing.

UK Mobile Commerce Sales Go UpWhile smartphones were preferred for browsing, among mobile devices, it was tablets that played the most important role for sales, themselves. That said, consumers still preferred to look around on those gadgets but make their actual purchases either on their laptops and desktops, or in person within the shops, themselves.

IBM’s data showed that on December 26, there was an increase in online sales by 40.4 percent when compared to the same date in 2012. Of all online traffic, smartphones and tablets represented 58 percent, that day, which was a massive 42 percent increase over the year before. The sales that were actually completed over those devices experienced a growth rate of 63 percent year over year. Among the total of online sales on that day, they represented over 45 percent in the United Kingdom.

The average order value that was placed on smartphones was £78.06, whereas the average order value for purchases made over tablets was slightly higher at £83.55. This indicates that people may be more comfortable spending slightly more when using devices with larger screens. When it came to actual online traffic overall smartphones represented just slightly more than tablets at 29.9 percent as opposed to 28 percent, respectively.

Mobile commerce sales on Christmas led by iOS

| January 2, 2014

This American data was reported in the IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark.

IBM has released its Digital Analytics Benchmark which looked into the mobile commerce sales that occurred on Christmas Day and has revealed that once again the largest number of purchases were made by devices based on Apple’s iOS operating system.

Overall, there was an increase in online shopping in the United States of 16.5 percent over last year.

That said, what they underscored as being most notable was the number of mobile commerce sales and the increase that occurred between Christmas Day last in 2012 and in 2013. Smartphone and tablet based purchases made up 29 percent of all of the online purchases that took place on that day. This was a notable increase from the 21 percent that was seen the year before.

iOS stood out as completely dominant in mobile commerce sales on Christmas Day 2013.Christmas Mobile Ciommerce Shopping Statistics

On that day, iOS came out far stronger than Android. Apple devices were the source of a tremendously higher percentage of the online purchases than those based on the Google operating system. In fact, the iOS share was five times greater than that of Android. Among all online sales, Apple’s devices were the source of 23 percent, and Android devices made up 5 percent of the purchases.

When focusing exclusively on mobile commerce sales, iOS devices represented a tremendous 83 percent, in comparison to a measly 16 percent from Android devices. This, despite the fact that the number of Android devices far outnumbers that of Apple devices. Android currently represents 51 percent of the U.S. smartphone market, leaving Apple way behind, but it still looks as though iOS is a market that can be monetized far more easily. Beyond the number of conversions, it is also the amount of traffic that was greater from Apple smartphones and tablets.

Furthermore, it was notable that tablets generated almost a fifth of the number of online sales on Christmas Day. This is much higher than the 9.3 percent from the same day the year before. This is surprising as there are far more smartphones than tablets.