Tag: mobile commerce

Retail m-commerce is not reaching its potential

| December 8, 2016

An Adobe report has indicated that mobile shopping could be a great deal more but retailers are holding back.

While retail m-commerce has been moving forward, according to Adobe, it could be doing a great deal better. The firm’s data from Europe showed that traffic to retailer sites isn’t reaching its potential.

Europe saw an increase of 54 percent year over year in its mobile retail traffic from smartphones.

Adobe published its European retail m-commerce data in its 2016 Mobile Retail Report. Beyond traffic, smartphone based shopping has also led to an 89 percent increase in its revenue growth since last year. This is far greater than the increase in revenue growth experienced via desktop – at 8 percent – and tablets – at 10 percent.

retail m-commerce - shopping on tabletStill, as much as the growth in revenues is significant, mobile commerce conversions aren’t nearly great enough to balance the slipping growth rates in the use of tablets and desktops. Europe saw a consistent increase in smartphone traffic throughout Europe. However, the average retailer experienced very little overall online traffic growth.

The boost in retail m-commerce isn’t actually driving up the use of online shopping overall.

On average, European retailers saw a year over year traffic increase of only 3 percent when taking all channels into account. Tablet traffic slid by 8 percent and desktop traffic fell by 7 percent. The smartphone growth rate was by far the highest but it was not adequate to make up for what was lost over other devices.

That said, the online retail revenue growth rate was healthy at 13 percent over last year. This was primarily built on the foundation of desktop purchases, which continue to represent the vast majority of online purchases.

Desktops brought in 74 percent of total online revenue, despite the fact that they represent a notably lower 58 percent of traffic. Clearly, the conversion rate over desktop is significantly higher than over other devices.

Smartphone retail m-commerce represented 12 percent of total online revenue but 27 percent of the traffic to retail sites across Europe. The average order value over desktop was also far greater than over smartphones. In that area, desktop outperformed smartphones by a sizeable 25 percent.

Mobile commerce security not as important as convenience for holiday shoppers

| December 7, 2016

A Trustlook survey showed that consumers will ignore certain risks in exchange for easy shopping.

Mobile commerce security is an important issue this holiday season. Seventy one percent of smartphone owners plan to use their mobile devices to help them along some point of the shopping journey.

Trustlook has recently released a survey with results from which it has made its holiday predictions.

The Trustlook survey focused on smartphone users with Android phones. The goal was to accurately forecast consumer behaviors throughout the holiday shopping season this year. What they found was that 40 percent of the survey participants actually prefer shopping over smartphones. This despite the mobile commerce security concerns that have been holding back the channel’s adoption.

Mobile Commerce Security - Shopping via smartphoneAnother 18 percent of the survey participants said that their preference was to shop in-store during the holidays. The results revealed that 43 percent of smartphone users will be making over $250 in purchases over their devices. The top m-commerce apps were identified as Amazon, eBay and Walmart.

That said, shoppers haven’t taken adequate mobile commerce security steps to protect themselves.

Even though 70.35 percent of participants in the survey said they planned to make a purchase over a smartphone or tablet, they were not protecting their personal and financial data. In fact, a wide majority of people hadn’t even installed security software. Sixty four percent of survey respondents did not have a mobile security app installed on their device.

Trustlook CEO, Zllan Zhang, said “Mobile shoppers need to be more cautious than ever,” adding that “This risk isn’t going away as mobile shopping activity ramps up.”

This is an interesting finding as concerns over mobile security have been among the top cited reasons that people have held off shopping over smartphones. It appears that there is a growing group of people who are moving ahead with smartphone based shopping regardless of that potential issue.

The hope from security firms is that if consumers are willing to ignore the mobile commerce security risk, they will at least take more steps to protect themselves. There are several small steps such as security apps that can help to keep sensitive data safer.