Only 23 percent of UK’s top 57 fashion retailers have a transactional mobile site or application, according to new research.
Integrated mobile and digital communications business, Mobile Interactive Group (MIG) today unveiled its Christmas Sock Report.
The research evaluated the UK’s top 57 retailers against their mCommerce capabilities, in particular testing them against the question: how easy is it to find and purchase the most popular Christmas present – a pair of socks?
The report concluded that only 16 retailers had a mobile application with only nine of these being capable of processing a transaction. In addition, only four retailers had an optimised transactional mobile site.
In total only 23 percent of all retailers in the fashion sector allowed users to find and purchase a pair of socks via mobile. Clicks to find a pair of socks ranged between two and five and clicks to the checkout (or registration page) ranged between five and eight.
The Sock Report comes on the back of MIG’s recent announcement where it revealed initial results for its design and build of the Marks & Spencer optimised mobile website.
During the first three months since launch the site achieved:
– 1.2m unique visitors with over 10m page views
– Purchases made from TVs to socks – £3280 was the largest order (for two sofas)
With Morgan Stanley, predicting that mobile will overtake fixed line internet access by 2013, the report highlights the need for the fashion retail sector to embrace mCommerce. Furthermore Tesco Direct last week issued findings of its analysis in to consumer shopping habits indicating that one in 10 Brits will do some of their online Christmas shopping using their mobile phone.
Ben Cusack, Group Marketing Director, Mobile Interactive Group said: “With the continued growth of smartphones and the mobile internet, mCommerce has rapidly grown in to a huge opportunity for the retail sector. In the UK M&S has played a pivotal role in championing investment in mCommerce by allowing their customers to search, browse and purchase their full product range on mobile, at a time and place that’s convenient for them.
“The Sock Report clearly demonstrates that the fashion subset of the retail sector is lagging behind somewhat and since we know that consumers’ online behaviour extends right in to the mobile channel, clearly there are huge gains to be made with a transactional mCommerce strategy in 2011.”
Growth in mCommerce is also on the increase in the US, where IDC Retail Insights recently reported ‘smartphones will account for at least $127 billion, or 28 percent, of the $447 billion the National Retail Federation predicts consumers will spend this holiday season’. Additionally, industry analyst Mary Meeker has predicted that mCommerce will gain market share faster than tradition online retailing.
Source: www.migcan.com
