Do Mobile Transactions Dominate the Mix?

More than two-thirds of digital transactions in North America take place on mobile, the majority of them via mobile app, according to new data from Criteo.

Criteo’s Global Commerce Review for the first quarter, which is based on individual browsing and purchasing data from over 5,000 retailers in more than 80 countries, found that desktops are responsible for just 33% of all online transactions in North America.  It’s worth noting that the data is limited to retailers that have both a mobile app and mobile site.

On a dollar level, mobile plays a smaller role, according to eMarketer estimates. In 2018, mobile commerce will hit $208.29 billion, accounting for roughly 40% of total retail ecommerce sales.

While most data providers, including eMarketer, see mobile playing an increasingly important part of ecommerce, that viewpoint is not universal. According to a recent report from Forrester Research, US online sales increased 14% year over year in 2017, yet the share of mobile sales dipped from 43% to 36% in that same timeframe. Forrester also revealed that the number of online mobile buyers who make purchases at least once a week declined from 21% in 2016 to 16% last year.

The Forrester data seems like an outlier but it underlines some of the challenges that mobile commerce still faces. For one thing, consumers still prefer larger screens for making purchases.  More than half of US internet users in the Forrester report  said it’s easier to shop on a computer, and almost as many respondents said they were accustomed to shopping this way.

Courtesy of eMarketer