eCommerce has recently celebrated its 20th birthday (where does the time go eh?) and has changed a lot in those twenty years. In today’s society, consumers are going online to purchase clothes, buy eBooks, stream music or watch a film through a range of devices, from smartphones to smart TVs.
Mobile overtakes desktop traffic
Smartphones and tablets have allowed rapid increases in m-Commerce. This week IMRG announced that for the first time, visits to retail websites from mobile devices is now greater than desktop visits, with smartphones and tablets making up 52% of all web traffic.
Tina Spooner, IMRG chief information officer, regards this news as “a huge landmark in the growth of mobile commerce”. It is a remarkable increase in a short period of time with mobile traffic in 2010, forming a mere 3% of web traffic.
Online sales
IMRG figures estimate smartphones and tablets accounted for £8.7bn of an overall spend of £24.2bn, in the three month period, May to July 2014.
Research shows smartphones and tablets account for 36% of online sales with this figure increasing to 40% for online clothing retailers such as ASOS.
Technology
Alex Smith-Bingham, VP of Capgemini expects the role of the desktop to diminish as retailers “develop their mCommerce platforms” and “technology becomes increasingly more sophisticated”.
With Christmas less than four months away (yes that soon!), retailers will be investing time and money into ensuring their mobile platforms are able to cope with the large quantities of shoppers purchasing through their smartphones and tablets.
Mark Lewis, Online Director at John Lewis states “customers want to be able to shop seamlessly across all channels and mobile is now the go-to choice alongside visiting our shops”.
Shopping Habits
The benefits of smartphones and tablets is that they are compact and lightweight. We can carry these devices around easily and shop when we’re watching TV on the sofa or relaxing in the garden. Even when we visit the high street, we can do a quick price comparison of the in-store price to the online price and easily identify any difference in price.
A recent study by Give as You Live, revealed 48% of UK shoppers are choosing to purchase goods from bed, whilst 11% are making online purchases whilst on the loo!
Amazon Well Placed
For those retailers looking to put their inventory on a mobile optimised platform with ease, Amazon is well placed to help, as its site and apps seamlessly cater for those customers shopping on their mobile devices. Registration and access to a Seller Central account is a relatively simple process and competitive pricing on the platform is easily handled through repricing software like RepricerExpress.
Will you be doing your Christmas shopping through your tablet or smartphone? Hopefully you’ll not be doing it on the loo!
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