Christmas has yet to arrive but online sales have already shot through the roof. The biggest shopping season of the year has showed some interesting trends thus far. The past two years an increase in both mobile and tablet use has been noticeably visible with the number of online shoppers dramatically growing.
Throughout the US, stores have been opening doors much earlier than usual this holiday season but it has been evident that a vast majority of shoppers have decided to stay indoors. Thanksgiving day online sales increased 14.3% from 2013 while Black Friday sales increased 9.5%. According to Fortune Magazine, "E-commerce sales on the Monday after Thanksgiving hit $2.04 billion, up 17% compared to a year ago, according to analytics firm comScore, making it the biggest online shopping day ever, and the first to surpass $2 billion in sales. For the full five-day period, sales rose 24%, and e-commerce sales so far are running ahead of forecasts."
Stats presented by IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark Hub showed smartphones and tablets accounted for 52.1% of all U.S online traffic. This is the first time in history mobile devices have outdone PC's for online browsing. Smartphones accounted for around 36.4% of all online traffic, while tablets accounted for 15.4%. Despite this fairly significant difference, tablets were responsible for almost 17.9% of all online sales, while smartphones accounted for 14.4%
Online sales are beginning to dominate the shopping world. Shoppers even have gone as far as to use their mobile phones while shopping to compare prices to see where they can find a better deal. While smartphones have been shown to be the first choice for browsing deals, tablets actually have shown to produce more sales. It seems that smartphones may be the easy "in hand option" to browse but when it comes time to purchase people still prefer a larger screen and larger keyboard for checking out.
These numbers however are nothing to be surprised about. It has been shown that most retailers seemed to be gearing towards mobile friendly and responsive website as well as developing mobile apps. E-Commerce retailers appear to be leaning towards having a more tablet friendly checkout experience, as they believe that smartphone checkouts and experiences are flawed and still lower in number.
It is rather difficult to gauge whether the Smartphones are helping drive conversions or if tablets are leading to PC conversions. However what is evident is that purchase trends are changing.
• The huge leap in online sales figures shows that E-Commerce business is growing and the buyers of tomorrow are going to surrender to it eventually.
• People prefer to scout deals on their smartphones, hence E-Commerce retailers need to ensure that they cater to their mobile savvy consumers.
• Smartphones, Tablets or Pc's, retailers need to have 'Responsive design' as their top priority
Even though Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday still remains to be on the top of shopping days of the year, retailers have said that spending power is on the rise and it is the yearly sales that are more accountable. Knowing of this rising trend it remains to be seen how many retailers adopt digital commerce to increase their business.