Category: Tablet Commerce

Tablet commerce is a vital part of retail online shopping

When it comes to making sure that shoppers will continue buying from the website, it must be properly optimized.

The latest data is now indicating that tablet commerce is skyrocketing in importance, as the ownership of these devices has blasted off by 282 percent over the last two years, and a growing number of those gadget owners are shopping over these smaller screens.

Retailers are being advised to make sure that their online experience caters to the devices preferred by their customers.

Shoppers are using tablet commerce both for making purchases as well as for researching products that they will later buy over their laptops and desktops, or in person at a brick and mortar shop. Although when it comes to mobile devices, smartphones have the greatest penetration, by far, the penetration of tablets is rapidly growing, and many reports are indicating that they are providing a far more appealing shopping experience for the consumer.

These consumers are responding positively to tablet commerce and are making more expensive orders over these devices.

Tablet CommerceThis rise of tablet commerce is giving retailers the opportunity to provide a much stronger mobile experience to their shoppers, as the slightly larger screens make it easier to navigate sites and view images of products. It is also easier for descriptions to be read.

The increase in tablet commerce is also vital to retailers seeking to remain competitive as it is rocketing forward at the same time that desktop commerce has been slowly, but steadily, declining. Consumers are responding very strongly to the ability to conveniently and instantly view goods and services that they are considering for purchase. Owners of these devices have a greater likelihood to shop online than many other types of device owners.

Recent data has indicated that 33 percent – that is, one in every three – device owners use their gadget for tablet commerce purchases. Moreover, Adobe has recently released a statistic that has suggested that the user of a tablet is likely to spend twice as much while shopping online than one who is using a smartphone. Clearly, this makes the larger screen consumer a highly valuable one.

Mobile commerce is driving massive visitor numbers to websites

Amazon, the leading retail sight among American consumers, has seen tremendous traffic increases.

According to a recent comScore analysis, the leading online retail store in the United States, Amazon, has increased its site’s visitor access by 42.9 million visitors exclusively over smartphones and tablets, over the month of June, alone.

This suggests that over one quarter of the shoppers at Amazon are shopping over these portable devices.

Among all of the 143.9 million people who made up the total digital audience at Amazon, a whopping 29 percent were mobile commerce only. When the visitors who visited the site from both desktops and either smartphones or tablets were taken into account, the total mobile audience was greater than that of the audience that used desktops exclusively.

It is important to note that Amazon isn’t even a leader in terms of the size of its mobile commerce audience.

Mobile Commerce and website trafficThe massive online retailer is not one of the largest mobile commerce only audiences in terms of their percentages (that is, as a percentage of their total audience). For example, Target had a mobile only audience of 37 percent, and Ticketmaster boasted 39 percent. Those were the second and first place companies, respectively. In third place was Best Buy, which had a mobile commerce only audience of 35 percent.

At the same time, other online retailers did not enjoy exactly this degree of boost from mobile commerce, however for all of the sites that were considered in the study, smartphones and tablets remained an important driver for what look to be incremental visits. This helps to better illustrate precisely how important the smartphone and tablet optimized shopping experience has already become.

It has been speculated that Amazon may have opened its Amazon Associates program to app developers in order to help to better capitalize on its mobile commerce strength. This will give developers the opportunity to advertise on their apps and link to actual Amazon products, earning themselves a cut of any sales that are made as a result. This could help to place the online retailer in direct and powerful competition with Google and Facebook.