Mobile Marketing magazine has reported House of Fraser claims that 50% of its online traffic is now originating from mobile devices. This a fairly big chunk of mobile traffic change, comparatively ASOS only receives 20% from mobile. Executive director Andy Harding disclosed the retailer is redesigning their mobile sites to tailor it to a nation of “on the go shoppers”.
So why has House of Fraser seen such a jump in mobile sales? UK consumers already know their way around a mobile shopping site with 58.3% of digital shoppers browsing or researching products on smartphones this year and an additional 15 million people doing the same on tablets, according to stats from eMarketer.
UK Mobile Commerce set to rocket
Even more impressively UK m-commerce, currently valued at £6.6 billion, will explode to a massive £17.2 billion by 2017. Confusion about new buzz term ‘mcommerce’ is forgiveable, in this particular study it is taken to include products ordered on an app or mobile browser excluding travel sales or event tickets.
Global Mobile Traffic statistics show huge increases
In fact we are seeing a staggering worldwide uplift in mobile traffic. The chart below, published by Business Insider, shows an already huge increase in traffic from mobile sites, in 2012 nearly a quarter of all online traffic was from mobile devices, surging from 12.59% at the end of 2011.
Is Traffic growth all down to the iPad?
Is this jump in mobile traffic due to tablet hype, such as the much anticipated introduction of the iPad mini, and a general increase in tablet ownership? Surprisingly, not really. The graph below shows that it’s actually iPhone users making up the majority of the traffic to mobile sites, contributing a total 43% of traffic in the US. A mere 17% comes from iPad, however this percentage is expected to rise as tablet sales are likely to overtake notebook sales in 2013. Android achieved the second highest amount traffic in the study contributing 35%, whilst Blackberry lags behind with a mere 2%, perhaps due to usage and functionality of mobile sites on these devices.
Mobile Traffic stats to global sites
So we already know that House of Fraser are claiming to be retail’s mobile winners, but who are the other big fish when it comes to mcommerce? The following chart shows retailers such as Groupon and the online jewellery retailer Pandora also already receiving over half of their online traffic from mobile users. 14% of Google’s traffic is also coming from mobile, which accounts for a huge amount of searches being conducted on the go.
Retail, then, is not the only industry that should take mobile commerce seriously. The role of mobile phones and tablets in paid search advertising in the UK now accounts for roughly 25% of total spend and 28% of total clicks, according to the latest data from digital marketing specialist Kenshoo. It will be interesting to follow how retailers and advertisers adapt to the growing mobile audience in both the UK and worldwide.
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