IBM: Mobile shopping grows in importance for holidays

Armonk, N.Y. — Retailers looking ahead to meeting the needs of holiday shoppers should be aware of the continuing growth of mobile’s importance as a consumer channel. According to IBM’s Eighth Annual Online Retail Holiday Readiness Report, mobile accounted for 23% of sales and 45% of traffic in November and December 2014, respectively.

By March, those figures had risen to 47% and 24% — both close to double what they had been in March 2013. In addition, retail websites see substantially more traffic from smartphones than tablets — 34% from smartphones in March, compared to 13% from tablets. However, the equation is reversed when it comes to sales. Consumers make more purchases via tablets at 14% than they do via smartphones at 11%.

This March, the average session length dropped to an all-time low of 6:42 minutes, while page and product views both declined by 8% and 10%, respectively, from March 2013. At the same time, shopping cart abandonment rates increased while single-page bounce rates hit 36%, a near-record high.

IBM analysis indicates this shift is being driven by two factors. Consumers continue fill up their free time throughout the day by making smartphone or tablet searches and purchases. At the same time, retailers are beginning to embrace new analytics-driven innovations that allow them to personalize each customer campaign and quickly connect them with the items they want, when and where they want it.

While most attention has been given to the explosive growth of mobile, retailers cannot afford to ignore what remains the most impactful online channel — the desktop. As of March, more than 75% of all online retail sales occurred via desktop. Although down from 87% in 2013, this statistic still remains higher than sales seen through smartphones and tablets. Desktops also posted the highest conversion rate of 4% and the highest average-order value of $121.60.



Many retailers don’t feel the urgency to prepare for holidays that are more than five months away. IBM advises that this is a big mistake. Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday still represent the biggest shopping period of the year. Despite this extended period of deals, Cyber Monday remains the biggest online deal day. When compared to every other day in the year, Cyber Monday generates the most online sales with the strongest shopper engagement, including the longest average session length, the highest new visitor conversion rate and the lowest bounce rate.