BWild |
December 29, 2016
A new Adobe Digital Insights report showed that smartphones played a considerable role in online shopping.
Mobile commerce sales came to just over $24 billion throughout the holiday shopping season this year. In fact, Adobe Digital Insights data showed that smartphones and tablets brought in that amount from November 1 through December 24.
That doesn’t include online purchases made over mobile devices at the last moment before Christmas.
Among all the mobile commerce sales this holiday season, smartphones were behind the vast majority. In fact, 68 percent of m-commerce purchases came from smartphones. Tablets were responsible for the remaining 32 percent. This represents a shift in usage as it looks as though people are now leaning toward their phones when they previously preferred the larger screened mobile devices.
Retail mobile commerce sales from smartphones brought in $16.63 billion, with $7.92 billion from tablets.
During the holiday shopping period, mobile devices were used for 31 percent of online retail sales, said the Adobe Digital Insights data. The remaining 69 percent of online purchases from retailers was through laptops and desktops. Last year, mobile shoppers represented 28 percent of purchases and in 2014, they made 19 percent of the purchases.
Adobe Digital Insights analysts predict that m-commerce will continue to take on a rising share of online sales. In fact, they stated that it is likely that this trend would have kicked in as early as the winding down of the holiday season. The reason is that from December 21 onward, many people were attending holiday functions and were more likely to have a smartphone in hand than to be seated at a work computer.
The report pointed out that the current mobile shopping experience still involves a certain degree of friction. This is primarily the result of the increased challenges involved in filling in purchase forms online. That said, it also underscored the fact that a growing number of retailers are working on improving that experience.
Retail mobile commerce sales could greatly benefit from the reduction of that friction. Some retailers are looking into options such as payment card information capture through the device camera, for example.
New Salmon data suggests that more online shoppers are looking to smartphones and tablets.
Salmon has released the results of its new research, showing that holiday season m-commerce rose by 26 percent this year. The Christmas shopping period has had U.K. shoppers turning to their smartphones and tablets to check prices, products and even to buy.
The increases began on Black Friday when mobile orders spiked with the launch of the shopping season.
According to Salmon research data, 53 percent of survey respondents said holiday season m-commerce made their shopping “easier and more convenient.” Another 57 percent of consumers in the U.K. said they would be prepared to embrace automated purchasing called Programmatic Commerce within 2 years.
On average, consumers in the United Kingdom were shopping online nine times per week, but this increased throughout the holiday shopping season. Mobile traffic increases suggests that consumers used m-commerce to fit their gift shopping into their very busy schedules.
As holiday season m-commerce approached Christmas, it continued to grow in its use.
Salmon recorded a growing shift toward mobile traffic and orders the nearer Christmas approached. Ever since Black Friday, mobile devices were leading in online retail traffic. Of all online traffic, 53 percent came from smartphones alone. In total, smartphones and tablets represented 68 percent of the traffic recorded at retail sites.
On the whole, this represents a 26 percent increase in the amount of retail mobile traffic when compared to 2015. This closely reflects the increase in mobile commerce use that was established on Black Friday, when 68 percent of the online retail traffic and 51.2 percent of the online orders came from smartphones and tablets. This represented the first year that mobile devices brought in more sales than desktops and laptops.
Comparatively, the holiday season m-commerce growth rate had been 14 percent more online orders than the figures from 2014. More than 8 million people throughout the United Kingdom have been using digital technology to shop on a daily basis. That represents 16 percent of the country’s population. Forty nine percent of the Salmon survey respondents said that technology (including smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops and others) has “made the shopping process faster.”
