Mobile

Transactions completed on the smartphone continue to rise globally. Especially in Northern Europe and Japan, mobile transaction now represent over half of online transactions. In Europe, Sweden is the absolute leader with 60 percent.

Amazon has updated both its mobile shopping app and its mobile website, so customers can now browse and ship millions of products to their country. The 'International Shopping' experience is available in English, Spanish, Chinese, Brazilian and German and 25 currencies, with more to be added later this year.

Fashion retailer Zara has announced plans to roll out an augmented reality experience across 120 stores worldwide. The app can also be used by online shoppers, who will be able to hover their smartphone over a package delivered from the Zara website.

Online retailers could sell more to consumers who shop from their smartphones, if they would offer a better shopping experience via the mobile app. Especially in the United Kingdom, the mobile shopping apps could really use an upgrade.

Mobile commerce sales in the three biggest ecommerce markets of Europe – the United Kingdom, France and Germany – will reach over 85 billion euros this year. Almost 57 percent of this amount will come from the UK, while Germany will have bigger mcommerce sales than France.

For the first time in the United Kingdom, ecommerce purchases made via smartphone will overtake that of tablets. This year, online sales that happened via smartphones represent 49.7 percent of all mcommerce sales. Mcommerce via smartphones will be worth about 20 billion euros in the UK this year.

Ocado, the online-only grocery retailer from the United Kingdom, has launched a mobile app for Alexa, the voice-controlled assistant from Amazon. Customers are now able to add a product to their basket, receive inspiration and keep track of orders by using solely their voice.

80 percent of leading retailers in the Nordics have an ecommerce app and a mobile-optimized ecommerce website. Almost one in five retailers have focused on optimizing their website for mobile visitors, rather than focusing on an app. Only 1 percent has neither.

It has become commonplace in the United Kingdom to use a smartphone to buy goods and services online. This year, almost 59 percent of digital buyers in the UK, which corresponds to over 25 million people, will make online purchases using their smartphone.

About 40 percent of all online grocery purchases made in the United Kingdom are done using a mobile phone. Online grocery shopping in the UK is also quite popular, as 7 percent of all grocery shopping is done online. That's more than Spain, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic combined.

Tommy Hilfiger has launched its first European shopping app. The mobile application is targeted towards seventeen European countries and supports four different languages. One of the things users of the Tommy Hilfiger app can do, is shopping looks directly from the brand's Instagram feed.

It looks like mcommerce in Germany is finally catching up. Although the usage of mobile devices for buying online and paying in-store in Germany is still lagging behind other big ecommerce countries, predictions look hopeful. In Germany, 29 million mobile users will buy online via a mobile device at least once this year, up nearly 15 percent from last year.

Online shopping via a smartphone or tablet continues to increase in popularity in the Netherlands. The number of online purchases that happened using the smartphone, grew 68 percent compared to 2015. Now, 9 percent of online purchases in the Netherlands happen via the smartphone, while the tablet accounts for 14 percent.

More and more consumers in Sweden are using their smartphone or tablet to shop online. The amount of mobile users in the Northern European country increased by 79 percent last year. Currently, six in ten mobile users in Sweden are women.

A new mobile app, called AnyPlan, has been released which aims to make it easier for online retailers and other ecommerce professionals to meet others at ecommerce events and trade fairs. The app includes a database with over 4.000 trade shows around the world.