Tag: holiday mobile commerce

Smartphones and tablets made up 37 percent of the traffic on shopping sites that day.

After a powerful push made over Thanksgiving, online spending and sales on Black Friday increased by 9 percent when compared to the same day last year, and 37 percent of that traffic came from holiday mobile commerce users.

The Benchmark real time reporting unit at IBM has released its data from that day.

The data covered 800 online retailers and took millions of different transactions into account. It examined the trends regarding online purchasing, including the holiday mobile commerce sales. When compared to 2012, all of the numbers were looking quite good, having increased over their previous figures. The average order value that was experienced on that date, for example, was $142.33. This was very promising for retailers who saw an average order value of $127.59 online on Thanksgiving, just a day before.

Holiday mobile commerce sales are playing an ever increasing role in those totals.

The shopping that has been occurring over smartphones and tablets has been steadily rising over the last year. This was made quite clear on Black Friday, when 37 percent of all online traffic came from these devices. When compared to the same date in 2012, this was an increase of a full percentage point. The sales that were made over these devices also remained strong, having represented 21 percent of all online sales.

Smartphones were much bigger players in online shopping than tablets, this year. They drove 24.5 percent of all of the traffic online, which was just a sliver over twice the contribution of tablets. Those latter gadgets drove 12.2 percent of the traffic. This makes it clear that at the moment smartphones are clearly the browsing device that people enjoy the most in the mobile sphere.

Equally, tablets owners made notably larger orders than smartphone owners. The average purchase made over a tablet came to $137.55. On the other hand, the average smartphone based holiday mobile commerce order came to $118.33. This indicates that shoppers will purchase more items or larger ticket items when they are working with a larger screen.

The same report that provided this insight also forecasted the importance of mobile commerce.

As the third quarter showed that online retail experienced a year over year increase of 13 percent, a growth rate that is notably higher than the overall retail environment, mobile commerce is rising approximately twice that fast, and social media marketing is playing an important role in that growth.

Both of those two factors will be making a considerable impact on the decisions and habits of holiday shoppers.

At the same time, the importance of social media marketing and of mobile commerce will also represent some massive changes in the way that consumers are informing themselves and spending their money throughout the holiday shopping season. This, according to comScore, a digital measurement and analytics provider.

comScore revealed its latest social media marketing data and predictions at a recent webinar.

Its predictions regarding the impact of social media marketing on the decisions that shoppers are making, and of the impact of mobile commerce throughout the holiday season were shared at the U.S. Online Retail Economy Q3 2013 webinar.

There, it was explained by the comScore vice president of marketing and insights, Andrew Lipsman, who was also a panelist, that the top themes that were coming into their own in this year’s busiest shopping season are “what I call the 4 S’s – social commerce, smartphones, sit-back shopping, and showrooming.” In terms of social media marketing, he pointed out specifically that the influence of Pinterest is growing and that the usage of this network is increasingly based on smartphones and tablets.

Aside from the importance of social media marketing over Pinterest, Twitter was also identified as being “important”. That said, when it comes to building brands, Lipsman stated that Facebook is maintaining its dominant position.

Social media marketing in order to encourage offline, electronic, and mobile commerce was shown to have three primary benefits, which include engagement, amplification and fan reach. This can play a very important role in a retailer or brand’s ability to communicate with consumers and encourage them to buy. At this time of year, this can make this technique a vital part of success.