Holiday shopping will receive a notable boost from smartphone shoppers.
It’s that time of year again, when businesses make the final tweaks to their strategies for Christmas shopping, and it looks as though 2012 will be a record breaker for mobile commerce sales.
Mobile purchasing has already started to trickle in but it is expected to spike very soon.
The preparations primarily have Black Friday in mind, but most companies aren’t going to wait until the last minute before deciding whether or not to work mobile marketing into their mix. Research data published by IMRG has suggested that in the U.K., by Christmas of this year, online sales made over a smartphone or tablet could reach as high as one in five purchases.
Moreover, it is believed that one in three site visits will be from mobile devices by that time. This forecast was released following the most recent outcomes of the IMRG Capgemini Quarterly Benchmarking Index, which indicated that mcommerce sales had increased by 11.6 percent in 2012’s second quarter. This was an increase of 8.6 percent over the first quarter of the year.
MoPowered has also released the results of mcommerce research with surprising outcomes.
They commissioned a study through a survey that was conducted online through OnePoll, a mobile research agency, which indicated that 84 percent of fashion retail businesses of small to medium size had not yet created a mobile website. This, despite the fact that 89 percent of them felt that mcommerce was a critical element to the survival of their businesses in the future.
The survey included the participation of 300 head execs and underscored the fact that many companies knew that mobile commerce is a critical part of the marketing and selling mix, but that there was significant hesitation throughout the industry as there are many barriers in the way. Primary among those barriers was security concerns relating to mobile payments (33 percent) and the time consumption that implementing a smartphone and tablet strategy would require (36 percent).
Still, among those businesses that have prepared for mcommerce for the Christmas shopping season, it should be a bumper year for sales that have been generated through smartphones and tablet devices.
