Brace for impact: mobile devices account for a third of online Christmas orders
Mobile shopping accounted for almost a third (28%) of 2016 online holiday orders across the UK, France and Germany, according to CJ Affiliate’s 2017 Holiday Intelligence Report.
The report finds that the UK accounted for 44% of online orders that came via mobile, compared to 32% in the US, 26% in France and 16% in Germany, demonstrating that many users in continental Europe still prefer to shop whilst sat in front of a computer.
Last year one journalist in particular did more than half of their Christmas shopping on the train, and it’s clear that the rest of the UK is right behind them. They believe that mobile spending will only grow, especially at busy, stressful times like Christmas, when consumers want to do their shopping quickly and conveniently. Their report shows that smartphone sales are rising as tablet spend drops; smartphone screens and resolutions are getting larger, and with mobile data more common in smartphones than tablets, they’re just easier to use for online shopping.
According to the report, which profiles sales made online in 2016 during the holiday periods, orders made on tablets are on the decline in the US and across Europe, with tablet orders in France down by 40%, US and Germany by over a quarter (26%) and the UK by 19%.
Retailers put substantial resource and planning in to the Christmas peak, but with the continued shift towards mobile shopping, brands need to continuously evaluate their marketing priorities. Reaching these shoppers is also a fine art – email is still the most successful way of reaching them, and interestingly, we have seen a mild decline in the popularity of search advertising.
The report showed that email publishers had the most success in growing share of orders on mobile devices (+53%), largely due to their success in reaching shoppers on their smartphones. Social, content, and mobile publishers are managing to grab both desktop and mobile orders and have a near 50/50 split on orders coming from both mediums. Shopping (-14%) and search (-2%) publishers saw a decrease in mobile orders due to shoppersí continued preference of evaluating and comparing products on desktop.