For The First Time Ever, Mobile Is Dominating The Online Shopping Season
On Thanksgiving weekend, 52% of traffic to ecommerce sites came from mobile devices, a 22 percent jump from 2013, according to IBM's Digital Analytics Benchmark survey. However, people were mostly only looking at the deals on their devices.
When it came to making a sale, mobile devices accounted for 32% percent of transactions tracked by IBM. That means that 68% of sales were still taking place on PCs.
Specifically, smartphones were used 36% of the time to browse but accounted for only 14% of total online sales. Tablets were used 15% of the time to browse but accounted for almost 18% of online sales.
That's mostly because shopping is still a pretty miserable experience on a smartphone, writes Jay Henderson, Strategy Director, IBM Smarter Commerce, "Many companies struggle with delivering a seamless mobile browse-to-buy experience."
As people increasingly use smartphones to shop, we expect ecommerce sites to start doing a better job catering to buying, not just browsing. Maybe by 2015?