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Michael Cooney

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iPad, iPhone and Android users to dominate online holiday shopping season

Facebook has growing influence in web holiday shopping as well

By Layer 8 on Sun, 11/06/11 - 9:33pm.

. What's this?

ibm If you needed any more evidence the mobile world is just exploding look no further than an IBM study out this week that says during this year's holiday season an unprecedented 15% of people in the US logging onto a retailer's Web site are expected to do so through a mobile device.

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Based on data from the IBM Coremetrics Benchmark, all online holiday shopping in November is also expected to grow as much as 15% over November 2010, but this year iPad, iPhone and Android phone users will be making a big impact.

From the IBM study:

iPhone & Android: For the first time, Android users will demonstrate similar levels of mobile shopping as iPhone users. These October 2011 numbers show iPhone accounting for 4 % of mobile traffic and Android 3.5%.
The iPad Factor: Shoppers using an iPad will lead to more retail purchases more often per visit than other mobile devices. This trend is based on October 2011 figures where iPad conversion rates reached 6.8 % as compared to the overall mobile device conversion rate of 3.6%.
Mobile Traffic and Sales: Record numbers of consumers will shift their shopping from the PC to their mobile device this holiday season. In October nearly 11 percent of people used a mobile device to visit a retailer's site, up from 4.2 percent in October 2010. Additionally, mobile sales continue to increase, reaching a high of almost 10% in October 2011, up from 3.4% in October 2010.
Social Influence: While the industry will see modest increases in direct social buying, the influence of these sites and services will eclipse that of other channels. According to October conversion rates, 9.2% of consumers that visited a retail site from a social media site made a purchase. This compares to 5.5% of all direct online shopping last year. Also in 2010, the vast majority of social shopping will continue to come from Facebook, which in October accounted for 77% of all traffic from social networks.

This is a trend that will grow beyond the holiday season too. Recently Gartner said that as much as 50% of company Web sales will come through social and mobile applications by 2015. The increase will come as e-commerce vendors offer new context-aware, mobile-based applications. Online sales increases will also be partly as companies move aggressively outside the US. Gartner predicts that by 2013, 80% of North American and European online sellers will expand into Brazil, Russia, India, Africa, Japan or China.

According to IBM, the Coremetrics Benchmark uses Big Blue's cloud-based digital analytics platform to rapidly collect and analyze consumer intelligence data.

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