Mobile shopping is the new normal. According to the following Forbes article, mobile will drive holiday sales as well as overtake computers as the digital device of choice for online retail sales.
This is the year that mobile wins! Shoppers will again turn to their phones for visiting sites – as phones will drive 68% of the season’s traffic. But the real story will be that shoppers will not just browse, but buy more on phones than any other device – edging out computers for the top device.
And on peak mobile days, like Christmas Eve, mobile will drive a massive 72% of all traffic and 54% of all orders.
To put mobile’s impact in perspective, we estimate that there will be more visits made on mobile phones this upcoming holiday season than across all devices during holiday 2015. We’re already living in a mobile-first world, and increasingly, holiday shopping will migrate to mobile-only.
Mobile wallets have helped make buying easier, and adoption from retailers and consumers continues to spike. We expect to see days where mobile wallets account for nearly half of all mobile orders in the US, with PayPal and Apple Pay leading that charge.
Retailers are finally catching on to the success that quick service (QSRs) and fast casual restaurants have experienced with mobile as a new sales channel. With better mobile app interfaces and more friction-free websites, merchants are finding a winning formula to attract and keep mobile shoppers engaged. This is now the age of the hybrid shopper where a buyer will see an item in-store, research it, and then complete the purchase transaction after leaving the store. Which is another reason why the competition for the mobile wallet will become greater than ever.
Overview by Raymond Pucci, Director, Merchant Services at Mercator Advisory Group
