Think Again. The statistics just get stronger & stronger. With all the billions of mobile smart-phones in the world, searching and buyoing goods & services on mobile is becoming commonplace. Don’t get stuck in the mindset of looking at it someday, seize the day today.
Black Friday has long been the busiest holiday shopping day of the year. That is, of course, until Cyber Monday came along and broke spending records consecutively for the past two years. In 2010, Cyber Monday became the largest online sales day of the year for the first time. The trend continued this year as sales increased by 33%, and 80% of retailers offered online promotions, according to an IBM Benchmark report.
Obvious by the figures published in the news, Black Friday and Cyber Monday produced record figures this year. A quick glance at the headlines reveals another trend in the making: consumer shopping habits have evolved with technology and moved to mobile devices and tablets. So I’d like to propose we create a new shopping day dedicated to mobile called Mobile Tuesday. Since consumers are quickly adapting (and shopping on) mobile devices, why not offer them a way to do so during the holiday season?
Consumers are going mobile in large numbers, and the 2011 holiday season proved it. IBM Coremetrics recently reported that consumers increased shopping on smartphones and tablets on Black Friday. Purchases made on mobile devices accounted for 9.8% of online sales, which is up 3.2% from last year.
GSI announced a 254% increase in US mobile sales on Black Friday. PayPal Mobile announced a 516% increase in global mobile payment volume over last year, and eBay Mobile reported US purchases were nearly two and a half times what they were last year. In addition, according to the IBM Benchmark report, 6.6% of people used a mobile device to shop in 2011, which is up from 2.3% from last year.
There’s not going to be a grand match between retail stores, online, and mobile. The three will complement each other and help the other grow. Both brick-and-mortar stores and e-commerce sites have helped retail sales figures continuously grow, especially online. Recently, comScore reported that e-commerce spending increased 14% from 2012 to $37.5 billion in Q2 in the US. This marks the seventh consecutive quarter of positive growth and the third consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. Online shopping is a gangbuster business.
And mobile is following suit, while also transforming the way people shop. With the rise of mobile devices, Americans are using tablets and smartphones to shop, as retailers are adapting to this trend. eBay, for example, predicts it will hit $5 billion in mobile sales this year. Mobile’s popularity isn’t limited to e-commerce either; instead mobile apps are increasing in popularity among shoppers. According to Internet Retailer, Pacific Sunwear of California Inc. launched an iPhone mobile app in May and already more than 50,000 people have downloaded it. In addition, a recent PriceGrabber report found one-third of smartphone owners have downloaded at least one shopping app.
For these reasons, it’s going to be increasingly important for marketers to advertise on mobile apps for the holiday season and beyond going forward. Clearly, we have some work to do. eMarketer projects that the mobile advertising spend in the U.S. will surpass $1 billion in 2011, and the research firm Borrell Associates predicts that the mobile app advertising market will rocket to more than $8 billion by 2015. While the numbers might appear impressive, it doesn’t do justice to that fact since Morgan Stanley predicts that 93 million smartphones will be shipped this year. This means when it comes to mobile advertising, there’s plenty of room to grow.
Mobile Tuesday would be a great way to help the industry continue to flourish. It will also allow marketers to integrate mobile devices into the holiday shopping season, all the while driving sales. The best part is that this day can only increase what sales retailers are already seeing on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, while reaching people as they engage with their highly coveted mobile devices.
Times certainly are a changing, and now there’s a new day in town—one that really will give us something to be thankful for.
Thanks to Zephrin Lasker from Frobes.com for this informative article. Want to look at making your own website?
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The mobile channel clearly provides great opportunities for merchants, but a poor-performing mobile commerce site might turn consumers away from a brand altogether.
