• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, June 11, 2015

While using a phone to shop has become rather commonplace, using a phone to buy is still a relatively small deal.

A major study last month by Deloitte Digital pegged the mobile influence on sales at 28% of all sales, translating to $1 trillion, as I wrote about here at the time (Mobile Influence on In-Store Sales: $1 Trillion).

But the influence of mobile on sales and the actual sales via mobile are a universe apart.

A new study now takes a look at that gap and examines the reasons for it.

To be sure, it’s not that U.S. mobile spending is small, since it reached an all-time high of $11 billion for the first quarter of this year, based on the mCommerce Gap study by comScore.

For context of that gap, mobile commerce spending last year was $32 billion; but it was only 12% of total digital commerce.

The comScore study found that mobile devices drive 59% of all shopping behavior. However, mobile commerce accounted for just 15% of total digital commerce in the first quarter compared to 85% for desktop spending.

And that is a significant gap.

To determine the reasons for the gap, comScore surveyed 2,400 U.S. internet users to rate how big an issue was and how frequent that issue inhibited them transacting via mobile device.

The biggest inhibitor for purchasing by smartphone is the lack of feeling secure giving payment information. Here, in order, are the inhibitors to smartphone purchasing:

• Do not feel secure providing payment information over mobile devices
• Cannot see the product detail
• Navigating between screens is too difficult
• Cannot browse between multiple screens easily to comparison shop
• Too difficult to input name, address and payment info
• Cannot navigate to coupons/discounts easily
• Connection speeds/spotty service slows the browsing process

With all those perceived friction points along the mobile path to purchase, it’s no wonder many shoppers continue to prefer heading out to the physical store.