Now that we’ve entered the holiday shopping season, having just finished with the Thanksgiving rushes of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the early results are starting to trickle in, and the reports are good, especially for online retailers.
According to a comScore report, in relation to online retail, spending during Black Friday saw an increase of 26 percent when compared to 2010. The total for online Black Friday spending, by comScore’s numbers, is $816 million. Not only are the numbers promising, but the methods in which online shoppers conduct their business is expanding beyond the home/work computer.
Mobile devices in reference to online shopping is increasing as well. In fact, the rise in mobile technology adoption gives potential online shoppers a degree of flexibility the home computers do not. No longer are you required to be at computer at a certain times, all because of the freedom these mobile devices provide. In fact, the impact of mobile devices in regards to this flexibility have some speculating about the death of Cyber Monday, because shoppers are no longer required to be tethered to a non-mobile computing device:
But the loss of Cyber Monday, which got its name when most people had to go into their offices to shop online, shows how far broadband, and now mobile, have come.
In reference to the loss of Cyber Monday, Giga Om’s article offers an update:
Akamai noted on Monday night that Thanksgiving evening experienced the peak traffic of the holiday season, making this the year that turkey day topped Black Friday’s and Cyber Monday’s peaks.
This makes sense considering the explosive growth of smartphones. With these connected devices, users no longer have to worry about running to their workstation or their home rig to take part in these online sales, and because of the increased accessibility, more and more online shoppers don’t have to wait until they are in front of a computer to participate.
Over at Shop.org, the mobile device holiday shopping increase was forecast thusly:
One quarter of Cyber Monday shoppers anticipate using mobile devices. The real standout this year, of course, is the continued rise of mobile devices for Cyber Monday shoppers: 14.5% of all Cyber Monday shoppers expect to use a smartphone and/or tablet device for at least part of their shopping, double the number we saw last year (6.9%). Among online shoppers this year, however, that’s actually a whopping 23.8%. For a retailer, that’s another golden opportunity to proactively make an offer to a specific customer, especially if that retailer can tap into location-based mobile advertisements with a specific call to action.
Clearly, people want to spend during the Thanksgiving sales season, which kicks off the holiday shopping season on an annual basis. Furthermore, with more and more consumers acquiring mobile devices, it only makes sense that mobile device shopping increases as well.
While this is becoming less and less of an issue, especially for the bigger consumption sites, it is still wise to make sure your site is mobile-friendly, especially if you’re planning on capitalizing on this willingness to spend.