Tag: mobile shopping

Mega Monday proves attractive to mobile shoppers

IBM Digital Analytics has released a new report concerning the performance of mobile commerce in the United Kingdom on the famous “Mega Monday” shopping event. Mega Monday fell on November 25 this year and is quite popular among consumers because of the special deals and discounts retailers tend to offer on that particular day. This year, consumers appeared to have favored shopping with their mobile devices rather than participate in traditional forms of commerce, largely due to convenience issues.

42% of online retail traffic came from mobile devices on Mega Monday

According to the report, online sales rose by 33.5% on Mega Monday over what they had been during the same day of 2012. Approximately 42% of all online traffic came from mobile devices, a 68% increase over 2012’s online retail traffic volume. The majority of this traffic resulted in a sale, with consumers taking advantage of the deals that were being offered by retailers during Mega Monday.

Tablets are ideal for mobile shopping

The report shows that many people favored their tablets over their smartphones when it came to mobile shopping. This is largely due to the more accommodating nature of tablets. The large screens of these devices make it easier for consumers to navigate retail sites, thereby making it easier to find and purchase products that they are interested in. Smartphones remain popular among most consumers, however, due to their convenient size.

Retailers look to mimic the success of the past

The holiday season has long been a significant time of year for retailers. Over the past two years, retailers have been putting more focus on the mobile sector, and this has been paying off for many companies. In 2011 and 2012, retailers saw a significant increase in revenue due to their proclivity for engaging mobile consumers. Many are hoping to mimic this success this year by ramping up their mobile commerce initiatives.

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.