RWRetailWire
Back to Discussions
DISCUSSION

Is mobile the most disruptive force in retail since online selling began?

Written by George Anderson

Photo: RetailWire

Research study after research study has shown that mobile traffic to retail sites has continued to increase as a percentage of overall visits. But, in the end, consumers have primarily used desktop machines to complete their purchases. Will the 2018 Christmas selling season change all that? At least one tech vendor says the answer is yes.

Salesforce has published a list of predictions ahead of the holidays including the assertion that mobile (smartphones and tablets) will, for the first time ever, be the primary devices used to order goods online. In the end, the customer relationship management firm expects 44 percent of all orders during the season to be placed using phones. Tablets are predicted to account for nine percent, pushing the total for mobile devices to 53 percent. As a point of comparison, mobile devices were used to place 39 percent of holiday orders in 2017, according to the tech vendor. Separate research conducted by Adobe pegged mobile as being behind 33.1 percent of the season’s sales.

"Mobile is undoubtedly the most disruptive force in retail since the onset of ecommerce," said Rick Kenney, head of consumer insights, Salesforce, in a statement. "This is the year shoppers turn to phones, buying more on phones than any other device, and making far more visits, too. We'll see more visits from phones this season than total ecommerce visits across the entire 2015 shopping season. And even those in-store shoppers are mobile — 83 percent of shoppers aged 18–44 are using their phones while in a physical store."

Sixty-eight percent of all traffic to ecommerce sites during the holiday season is expected to come from mobile, up 19 percent over last year.

Discussion Thread0