ARMONK, N.Y. –
Mobile devices are
playing an increasingly important role
in online sales.
According to IBM’s Smarter Commerce
service, nearly 11 percent of
shoppers used a mobile device to
visit e-tail sites on Cyber Monday, up
from 3.9 percent in 2010. This helped
spur a 187 percent increase in mobile
channel share, to 6.6 percent of all Cyber
Monday purchases.
The move to mobile was also evidenced
by eBay, which reported a
397 percent increase in the number of
customers shopping through PayPal
Mobile on Cyber Monday.
IBM, in its fourth annual Cyber Monday
Benchmark report, cited Apple’s
iPhone and iPad as the two top devices
for mobile traffic on Monday,
together accounting for 7.4 percent of
all online visits vs. 3.2 percent for all
Android devices.
But when it came to mobile purchases,
iPad was the No. 1 platform of
choice, with conversion rates reaching
5.2 percent, compared with 4.6 percent
for all other devices, IBM said.
Still, total mobile sales were higher
on Black Friday (9.8 percent of all web
purchases) than Cyber Monday (6.6
percent), as was mobile traffic (14.3
percent vs. 10.8 percent).
