While predictions abound of the growth in sales via mobile over Christmas, figures for October released by Affiliate Window show that sales through tablets and smartphones actually dropped very slightly between September and October falling from 23.05% to 22.70% of total online sales. However, this is expected to rise significantly through November and early December, the company believes.
The fall has been brought about by fewer online sales taking place through tablets, the figures reveal. Smartphone sales have actually increased from 7.67% in September to 7.87% in October. However, sales through tablets have fallen from 15.14% to 14.62% of total online sales over the same period.
The reason, believes Affiliate Window is that greater traffic is hitting Android tablets, but the conversion rate via these specific devices is lower than on iPad. This has led to a slight overall drop in sales through tablet, despite overall smartphone sales growing. “While consumers are increasingly using Android tablets to browse the web, they are less likely to be purchasing,” says the Affiliate Window monthly benchmark report. “The share of Android tablet sales is some way below the share of clicks”
This is backed up by a look at Android conversion rates across all devices, which finds that in October sales peaked at 14.23% against a traffic peak of 22.57% in the same period – clearly demonstrating that Android users browser and don’t buy.
Generally, however, conversion rates across mobile devices continued to be above desktop for the fourth month running. Conversion rates across mobile and desktop both improved in October however, to bring them closer together. Mobile converted at 3.68% while non mobile increased to 3.48%.
When broken down by device type, tablet traffic continues to convert at the highest rate. In October tablet traffic converted at 5.03% Handset traffic saw an increase in conversion rate from September and converted at 2.45% We also saw an increase in desktop conversion rates – up to 3.48% Games consoles dropped below other mobile devices (e.g. iPod) but both of these categories are from a minimal volume of traffic.
Interestingly, in October the Windows Phone continued to lead the way despite dropping to 4.75%. It is important to note that this is from a minimal volume of traffic though. Of the volume driving devices, Android mobile and iPhone converted at exactly the same rate – 2.43%. Incidentally, Blackberry also converted at this rate, albeit from a significantly lower volume of traffic.