Fifteen percent of e-commerce shoppers will log onto brand websites using a mobile device this holiday season, according to the IBM Coremetrics Benchmark Industry Report released Nov. 4. The study also predicts total online holiday shopping in November will grow 15% compared with last year.
Nearly 11% of consumers used a mobile device to log onto a retailer’s site this October, an increase of seven percentage points from October 2010. Mobile sales increased 6.2 percentage points, totaling 9.6% of online sales in October, compared with 3.4% in October 2010.
John Squire, chief strategy officer of IBM Coremetrics, said we are witnessing “the end of the PC area.”
“All of those people who predicted for the last 10 years that next year would be the year of mobile are finally right,” he said.
Mobile commerce is expected to surge this holiday season because of an increase in iPad and Android device adoption, Squire said.
Conversion rates for the iPad, at 6.8%, are more than three percentage points higher than overall mobile device conversion rates, according to the IBM Coremetrics report. Roughly 5% of all online holiday sales will go through an iPad. The report also indicates Android device traffic has almost caught up with iPhone traffic, encompassing 3.5% of total traffic, versus the iPhone, which encompasses 4% of mobile traffic.
Social media will also play an important role this holiday season, according to the report.
Consumers who visited a retail site from a social media site made a purchase 9.2% of the time, compared with 5.5% of all direct online shopping last year.
The IBM Coremetrics Benchmark analysis gathers data directly from the websites of more than 500 leading U.S. retailers.
