Holiday season m-commerce rose by 26 percent this year

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.”