Top Five Reasons People Don’t Buy On Mobile Phones

By Chanel Smith EMEA Editor (@PYMNTS_EMEA)

A mobile apocalypse is expected to hit the UK by 2014: A time when there will more mobile phones than there are people.

According to a new infographic by Affiliate Window, a UK-based affiliate marketing network, 62 percent of British consumers own a smartphone. But, not only are smartphones becoming increasingly ubiquitous—the technology is also hogging consumers’ attention. The study indicates that 58 percent of smartphone owners said they check their phone every hour. Smartphone users are spending more time on their phones, which in turn results in more buying on mobile commerce platforms.

PYMNTS.com breaks down this mobile infographic to find out what consumers are doing on their phone and why.

Starting With The Numbers

August 2013 was an impressive period for mobile technology performance across the UK. According to the infographic, one-in-five clicks were done through a mobile device, including both phones and tablets. Thirteen percent of these clicks were specifically handset only traffic.

Twenty-three percent of UK sales were purchased on a mobile device, and 9 percent were done on mobile handsets.

Top Five Reasons People Don’t Buy On Mobile

Mobile shopping in the UK is growing slowly, yet steadily. EMarketer recently reported that the UK mCommerce conversion rate increased from 1.27 percent in 2012 to 2.03 percent by June 2013.  Moreover, the vast majority (87 percent ) of UK consumers said they would rather shop on their home computers than on their mobile. Yet, mobile phones still came in as second preference, with 12 percent.

Affiliate Window’s survey prompted respondents, and asked them to list reasons why mobile phones were not their preferred shopping device. The infographic illustrates the top five reasons to be namely security, the small screen size, a lack of details, too much time and difficulty to compare products and prices.

Consumer Tendencies On The Mobile

The study reveals that of the smartphone users who do purchase on their phone, 37 percent said they mobile shop from home. Several respondents claimed they will begin a product search on their smartphone, but 65 percent of these mobile searches are then continued on a mobile tablet or a desktop computer.

The infographic highlights the notion that mobile commerce is not only sales-centric. Instead, mobile commerce provides customers with other services such as store locators, product information features, promotional codes, comparison prices and more.

To view the infographic click here.