Report: Smartphones dominated Christmas e-commerce traffic

Philadelphia -- A post-holiday e-commerce report released Friday by technology company Monetate said that, on Christmas Day 2012, 16% of all e-commerce traffic came from smartphones and 15.6% came from tablets, a marked upswing from a year earlier when just 6.4% came from smartphones and 8% from tablets.



According to the E-commerce Quarterly, which examined holiday trends through Christmas, smartphone conversions didn’t receive any real bump – just 1.2%, compared with 4% for tablets, but traffic hovered over 10% for the holiday shopping period.



These numbers, said Monetate, point to consumers using smartphones primarily as “retailer prompted research” tools.



“One of the most telling insights from the EQ4 2012 is the Christmas Day device data,” said Kurt Heinemann, CMO, Monetate. “On Dec. 25, 15% of all e-commerce traffic came from tablets, whereas the average tablet traffic percentage in December was about 10%. This reveals that mobile is increasingly the device of choice. When consumers have leisure time and any device at their disposal, they reach for the tablet or smartphone. E-commerce had better be paying attention to this trend.”