• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, January 2, 2014

Smartphones drove 21.3% of all online traffic in 2013 -- nearly double the rate for tablets at 12.8%. Tablets drove 11.5% of all online sales, while smartphones accounted for 5%.

Tablet users on average spent $118.09 per order versus smartphone users, spent on average $104.72 per order, per the IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark report.

Overall, fourth-quarter 2013 online sales rose 10.3% compared with the year-ago quarter. The majority of mobile sales originated from devices running Apple iOS. In fact, iOS accounted for nearly five times greater online sales at 12.7%, compared with Android at 2.6%. On average, iOS users spent $115.42 per order, compared with Android users at $83.56 per order. iOS also drove most of the traffic, about 22.1% vs. Android at 10.6%.

Overall, mobile traffic in Q4 2013 accounted for nearly 35% of all online traffic -- up 40% compared with the year-ago quarter. Sales from mobile devices rose 46% from the prior-year quarter, comprising 16.6% of all online sales.

Search engines Google, Bing and Yahoo competed with social sites like Facebook and Pinterest for referral traffic this past holiday season. Marketers realized the power of Pinterest as a branding and referral tool. Consumers who jumped from Facebook to sites where they could purchase products spent $60.48 per order on average, but Pinterest referrals spent $109.93 per order.

Pinterest's average order value rose high above Facebook's, but the site's impact on conversions trailed by more than three and a half times the rate.

IBM also reported real-time trends across several retail subcategories for the fourth quarter of 2013. Department Stores' online sales grew by 62.8% compared with the prior year, with mobile sales growing by 49.6% year-over-year. Health and Beauty experienced 14.7% growth, with mobile sales up by 81.7% year-over-year. Home Goods rose 46.4%, with mobile increasing 38%; and Apparel rose 10.2%, with mobile at 54.5%, respectively.