By Chuck Martin
Mobile shoppers continue to visit stores and websites and buy from all locations.
Two regular benchmarks that I follow just came out and shine a light on both areas and point to an evolving mobile marketplace.
Physical store traffic is down, mobile traffic is up, people are spending more time in stores and buying more from mobile devices.
Retail store traffic in July dropped 6% from the same month last year, according to the Euclid retail benchmark. The data is derived from measuring tens of millions of shopping trips by tracking the location and movement of smartphones.
The good news for retailers is that the number of shoppers who entered a store as a percentage of those passing by increased to 8%.
The bad news is that the number of shoppers who came into the store and left within five minutes increased to 9%. But fortunately for merchants is that the amount of time the majority spent in their stores increased to 27 minutes per visit.
On the downside, the number of people who returned to the store more than once in 30 days dropped to 11% of all visits measured, according to Euclid.
On the mobile-only front, activity is up in every area, based on the new Mobile Commerce Index by Branding Brand, another monthly benchmark I regularly track.
Smartphone commerce activity increased across the board. Here are the increases from the same month a year ago:
98% — Revenue
73% — Orders
33% — Page views
25% — Visits
The data is based on 121 million smartphone visits globally to major retailer sites, 1.3 billion page views, 2,700 orders and revenue of $319 million. The categories included apparel, health and beauty and home goods at websites optimized for smartphones.
The split between people accessing sites via desktop and mobile is now almost exactly the same, with smartphone visits increasing to 35% of site visits.
Consistent with other studies, Branding Brand found that non-mobile revenue still dominates sales, though smartphone revenue share increased to 11% at $18 million. Revenue from iOS devices continues to lead, accounting for 66% of revenue compared to 35% from Android devices.
Either way it’s measured, consumers with phones continue to shop.
All the top mobile commerce topics are on tap for this Thursday’s MediaPost OMMA mCommerce conference in New York. Check out the agenda and register to attend. I hope to see you there.
Chuck Martin is Editor of the mCommerce Daily at MediaPost and writes the daily MobileShopTalk column. He is the author of “Mobile Influence,” “The Third Screen,” and “The Smartphone Handbook.” He is CEO of Mobile Future Institute. Chuck Martin is a frequent Mobile Keynote Speaker and Mobile Marketing Speaker internationally. He also addresses Social Media in Mobile.
