Mobile shopping overtakes the desktop

Mobile shopping overtakes the desktop

According to recent data from Shopify (based on 100,000 online shops) mobile shopping now accounts for 50.3% of all ecommerce traffic.

The data shows that more people now use mobile phones and tablets to visit online stores than using computers. Shopify stores recorded 50.3% of traffic coming from mobile (40.3% from mobile phones, 10% from tablets) and just 49.7% from computers.

It’s been a steadily growing trend for years, but now there’s no disputing it: mobile shopping is now the default way that people shop online.

The rise in mobile phone traffic to online stores is partly being fuelled by the overall trend of social discovery becoming a major marketing channel.

Facebook on average typically accounts for less than 5% of traffic to online shops on desktop, the number jumps to 7% when looking at mobile phones. In comparison, traffic coming from Google Search represented 18% of traffic from computers, but just 12% on mobile phones. This data seems to show that computers are being used to search for more commodity-type goods, while social media and mobile are used for more spontaneous, discovery-based purchases.

Always-on shopping.

The rise in mobile shopping also brings about another fascinating trend… “always-on shopping”.

Computer-based traffic to ecommerce sites traditionally peaked between Monday and Friday and trailed off during the weekend. Mobile traffic has somewhat opposite behaviour since shoppers use their phones most during the weekends. So when you combine mobile, tablet and computer traffic to ecommerce sites, you no longer find any discernable spikes when people are shopping online. In other words, shopping is no longer something people go and do anymore; it’s something they are always doing.

Improving conversion rates for mobile shopping.

One of the challenges of mobile shopping is the lower conversion rate. Conversion rates are still quite low for mobile devices—about .75% for smartphone and 2.5% for tablets. Often customers will discover and shop on their mobile and then go home and buy on their laptop or desktop. Of course this rate is steadily improving too.

Most people make a quick decision about your site and business based on their first impressions and if your site is not speed optimized and simple to use they will go elsewhere, not back home to their desktops. They will move on to a competitor who has a faster and easier site to use, or they’ll just give up. They might persevere, if you sell something nobody else does, if you’re lucky.

Optimize your shop for mobile.

Have you optimized your online shop for mobile shopping? Talk to us, we can help you convert your website to a responsive design like we recently did for Love Handbags (see this website on desktop, tablet and mobile!).