According to January’s sales figures from IMRG [IRDX VIMR], use of smartphones for shopping has rocketed up by 96% since January last year. Consumers are clearly much more confident with using their phone for e-commerce.
But this doesn’t tell the whole story. Yes, consumers are embracing mobile and any last vestiges of concern around actually conducing commerce on them have evaporated. However, what the stats on smartphone usage fall short of showing is that smartphones are increasingly part of the whole shopping process, as well as being an end in itself.
According to a global study of 1.4 billion online transactions carried out by Criteo and published in its Q4 2015 State of Mobile Commerce Report, Four in 10 purchases occur across multiple devices or channels and of that, close to one-third are completed on a mobile device, indicating that consumers are using numerous devices along their path to purchase and are regularly buying on mobile.
Of all the many studies that try to make sense of what consumers are actually doing around e and m-commerce, this Criteo one is perhaps one of the most significant. If it’s right – and the fact that it has assessed such a large amount of transactional data to arrive at its conclusions suggests that it paints a pretty accurate picture – then it shows that 2015 was a turning point in retail. For it was when consumers truly went omni-channel in their thinking.
Perhaps more significant still is that a third of these now largely omni-channel (or perhaps channel-immune?) consumer finishes their shopping journey on mobile.
Conventional wisdom to date has been that mobile is a starting point; a place to research and price compare, to browse and think, but the real ‘sell’ comes in store or on a PC later on. Not, it would appear, for a growing number of shoppers.
All this points once again to my rant du jour that no retailer can afford to be without a good solid mobile presence. It is the starting point for many, but it will increasingly become the end point too for the majority – and slowly all points in between. Developing a strong mobile presence now is the key to having a strong omni-channel offering. You can’t afford to wait.
