Online shopping on mobiles overtakes desktop in UK

Visits to online stores via mobile devices like smartphones and tablets have overtaken desktop for the very first time, new figures show. A fascinating 52% of visited were made via a mobile device, while 36% of online sales in the United Kingdom are now completed on such device.

This is apparent from the latest IMRG Capgemini Quarterly Benchmarking Report. The study also shows that for retailers selling clothes online the percentage of sales happening via mobile devices is even 40%. Especially tablets are popular in the UK as they account for 82% of sales completed on a mobile device. Smartphones account for around 18%.

Huge landmark in growth of mobile commerce
The report also shows that British consumers spent approximately about 30.5 billion euros online during May to July, of which about 11 billion was being spent via smartphones and tablets. “With over half of all e-retail traffic now coming via smartphones and tablet devices, the latest results reveal a huge landmark in the growth of mobile commerce”, says IMRG chief information officer Tina Spooner. “Considering that as recently as 2010 mobile visits to e-retail sites accounted for less than 3% of traffic, this latest milestone represents staggering growth of 2,000% over the past four years.”

These numbers tend to show us that the era of the desktop, particularly in its role in our day-to-day shopping cycle, is diminished. Retailers have further developed their mcommerce platforms, while customers are more and more seeing the benefits of shopping online in the comfort of their home, on the way or wherever they are. As ecommerce is increasingly becoming a bigger part of the retail industry, it’s interesting to see what part mcommerce will play in all this.

As customers want to be able to shop seamlessly across all channels, mobile will be a huge part of their shopping cycle. Online retailers should focus intensely on developing a solid mobile strategy by providing visitors with a mobile-friendly website and interface and providing them with handy apps.

A recent study from GfK showed that laptop and desktop are still the most popular devices for online shopping, accounting for 93%. Tablet outside store (48%), smartphone outside store (38%), smartphone in store (22%) and tablet in store (20%) were also popular shopping devices. In the same infographic it’s shown that mobile is present throughout the entire purchase journey: