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Valentine's Day Shopping: Mobile Sales Up 35%

Mobile commerce had a Happy Valentine’s Day.

Online sales numbers for U.S. retail are in and it turns out that a lot of mobile searching was going on with an increasing number of sales moving from desktop to smartphones and tablets.

Mobile accounted for almost half (47%) of all online traffic, an increase of 27% from a year ago, according to the latest tracking from the IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark, which tracked sales in the week leading up to Valentine’s Day.

Mobile sales accounted for 23% of all online sales, an increase of 35% from last year.

Smartphones were the browsing device of choice, driving 34% of all online traffic compared to tablets at 12%

Interestingly, it used to be that tablet sales dwarfed those from smartphones, but not this time around. Smartphones accounted for 11% of sales with tablets just one percentage point higher.

And consumers spent considerably from their mobile devices, with the average order size from smartphones at $92 and $99 from tablets.

Overall online sales increased 10% from a year ago.

It appears online sales may be somewhat stabilized but mobile growth is on a tear, at least for jewelry.  While online sales of jewelry grew 5%, mobile sales increased 53% from last year.

Mobile also slightly outpaced online growth at department stores, with online sales growing 17% and mobile 20%. But for apparel, total online sales grew 18% compared to 4% for mobile.

Consistent with other studies, sales from Apple devices led the mobile way, with iOS at 17% of sales compared to 6% from Android devices. Apple devices also accounted for more than two times the overall online traffic than Android

While numerous studies show that most purchases still are happening in physical stores, mobile continues to muscle in on the world of online searching and shopping.

 

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