• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, December 2, 2013

What a difference a year makes, at least in the world of mobile commerce.

The Thanksgiving timeframe mobile shopping stats have been flooding in and all point to a substantial increase in mobile shopping activity over just a year ago.

Based on the research, there’s little doubt there is a significant mobile influence on holiday shopping so far.

What strikes me as even more significant than the size and scope of mobile shopping activity is the increase in the amount of it.

For example, the IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark, which continuously tracks online sales, showed increases in mobile activity up for the weekend before and on Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday and today, compared to a year ago.

While mobile traffic from Thanksgiving through Sunday accounted for much (41%) of all online traffic, it increased more than a third (35%) from the same period last year, based on the IBM data.

For today, mobile traffic accounted for almost a third (31%) of all online traffic, but increased 58% from the same period a year earlier.

The IBM benchmark isn’t the only research pointing to an increase in mobile activity.

• Survey Analytics found that while many (62%) of Black Friday shoppers did their shopping online, a third (33%) shopped on mobile phones.
• Branding Brand’s Mobile Commerce Index, which analyzes data on commerce websites designed for smartphones, found that compared to last year, visits increased 69%, page views increased 103%, average order size increased 16% and mobile sales increased 258%.
• Usablenet’s Holiday Shopping Index, which measures and analyzes mobile shopping activity across 20 retailers, found substantial increases in a host of mobile shopping activities compared to the previous month. Mobile visits increased 93%, mobile transactions were up 219%, revenue from mobile transactions increased by 368%, average order value was up 56%, conversion rates increased by 93% and shoppers spent an average of 47 seconds longer on site.

The National Retail Federation pegged overall spending over Black Friday weekend at $57 billion.  

And an increasing amount of influence on that spending can be attributed to mobile.