E-commerce is fast reaching a tipping point into mobile commerce. “Mobile commerce adoption is far ahead of expectations,” reads a report out today from Criteo, a performance marketing technology company, which says mobile currently comprises 30 percent of e-commerce transactions globally.
A majority (53 percent) of these transactions are coming from smartphones, not tablets. And order values from mobile are reaching desktop levels, especially (in the U.S.) for fashion, luxury, sporting goods and health and beauty purchases.
China is heading toward a massive m-commerce market, given that it’s home to 500 million smartphone users: This week, Alibaba reported that 54 out of every 100 payments processed by its Alipay affiliate in 2014 (through October) came from mobile devices, compared with just 22 in 100 last year. In the third quarter, Analysys International reports, online shopping transactions through mobile devices in China more than tripled from 2013. In India, meanwhile, Flipkart reports that while fewer than 10 percent of orders, transactions and visits came from mobile in 2013, by late 2014 those numbers were all above 50 percent. Amazon has said that more than 40 percent of its traffic in India stems from mobile devices.
In the U.S., IBM’s Digital Analytics Benchmark reports that for the first time in the U.S., mobile traffic on Thanksgiving surpassed that from desktops as consumers prepared for holiday shopping. On Black Friday, mobile sales accounted for 27.9 percent of total online sales, up 28.2 percent over 2013.
Consumers are quickly taking to the smartphone to browse, shop (for groceries, luxury purchases and anything in between) and also pay for goods in physical stores. Brands will need to make every step of the consumer journey easily accomplished on mobile, as well as fast and fun. With the fashion app Spring, for instance, it’s easy and enjoyable to browse on the go, and transactions can be completed with a fingerprint, thanks to Apple Pay integration.