Retail’s ‘Mobile Moment’

‘Tis it the season for mobile payments? We’ll soon find out. But ’tis definitely the season for mobile commerce.

While paying via mobile and paying with mobile are two different beasts for companies like Apple, Samsung, and Google to tackle, the sheer fact that consumers are turning more toward their mobile device to complete their commerce experience is a step in the right direction for the mobile pay players.

Baby steps, of course. But a behavioral shift in consumers (as the data show) takes time. The first step is getting consumers conditioned to shop on mobile. From there, consumers begin to see their devices as an extension of the commerce process — a one-stop shopping device to browse and checkout online. The natural extension after that is thinking about the phone as a payment device, instead of just a browsing and buying device.

What the latest stats that came out about holiday shopping show us is that mobile commerce is ripe for the taking, and retailers who don’t have mobile-optimized sites are going to be left in the dust. Every story about holiday shopping in the past week has been focused on one thing: mobile. And how much market share mobile is getting in the eCommerce shopping pie.

From a retailer’s perspective, it’s about hitting that mobile moment. This means being equipped with a (functioning) mobile-optimized site that is ready whenever and however a consumer wants to shop. Otherwise, those mobile dollars are bound to end up at another retailer (or Amazon).

And the mobile commerce data from this week alone show the impact mobile is having on the retail market.

Adobe’s data projects that December’s first 18 days should total $1 billion in sales each. Mobile accounted for 49 percent of shopping visits on Cyber Monday, according to Adobe’s data.

But there’s still a gap in consumers who are browsing on mobile and buying on mobile. There’s still a large percentage who may be browsing on mobile and then heading online via desktop, or even to buy in-store. In terms of sales, mobile accounted for 26 percent of sales ($799 million) on Cyber Monday.

Of the total from the day, $514 million in sales were attributed to mobile, including $313 million from smartphones. Those figures broken down by phone type include: $205 million on iPhones and $107 million on Android. On tablet, it was $201 million, with $170 million from iPad and $28 million from Android.

But what do those figures mean? And how does it fit into the overall snapshot of the mobile commerce market? If you recall, PYMNTS dug into the impact global mobile commerce is having on the payments and commerce ecosystem with these key stats about mobile commerce market share, mobile commerce buyers/spending, mobile transaction volume and the value of those global online shoppers.

This week, we’re turning your attention back to the U.S., primarily, with the latest data on retail mobile commerce and how it’s impacting the overall mobile economy. This includes breaking down mobile commerce sales as a total percentage of eCommerce and overall retail sales, gaining a better understanding of how many mobile shoppers there are, and breaking down the revenue percentage growth change as mobile commerce becomes more of a normalized practice.