What You Need to Know About Mobile Internet Users and Their Shopping Behavior | ConversionXL

May 30, 2012

80% never leave home without their phones in hand. They do everything on it, including shopping. Whatever your business is, an ever growing chunk of your target customers are using their mobile devices instead of computers to go online.

By 2013, more people will use mobile phones than PCs to get online

Most of the cellphones are already smartphones. While Android is the most common platform, and wealthier users prefer iPhones, your website should work equally well on all platforms.

80% of customers abandon a mobile site if they have a bad user experience.

Smartphones and tablets aren’t small desktop computers – they’re new devices being used in entirely new ways.

People will want the mobile websites to load as fast as desktop sites (in 3 seconds or less) – even though the bulk of mobile users are on a 3G network that’s slower than broadband internet. So you need to cut the excess fat.

A lot of people use smartphones while waiting (in line to get a dose of Starbucks, supermarket checkout line etc). They don’t want to wait while waiting.

men are more likely than women to make purchases with their smartphone, and they are more likely to buy services.

tablet users spend over 50% more per purchase at online retailers when compared with smartphone visitors, and 20% more when compared with traditional laptop and desktop visitors.

Tablet visitors were also nearly three times more likely to buy products and services online than smartphone visitors and were nearly as likely to purchase as desktop/laptop visitors.

 

The findings are based on roughly 16.2 billion online transactions from 150 top U.S. retailers in 2011.

Austin Bankhead, director of Adobe Digital Marketing Insights, suggests that when making purchases, the large tablet screens are easier to use than smartphone screens, and he also noted that the high price point of most tablets means that owners may be more affluent than other visitors.

Tablet owners are the most active local searchers with 64 percent using their devices at least weekly for local searches and 86 percent making a purchase from their most recent tablet-based local search, according to a report from Localeze and 15miles.

 

The reason might be that people are more likely to keep tablets at a fixed location (home) due to bigger size compared to smartphones.

Receiving the message via smartphone doesn’t mean that they’re going to complete the purchase using it. 43% of actually did it later via computer. Another 35% have done so in person, slightly more than the 34% who have done so via smartphone browser.

 

People might prefer completing purchases on a computer due to habits and security concerns. Consumers still think of PCs/laptops as secure devices. Only 11% of PC users hesitated to part with money, fill in their personal details and purchase goods online whereas the figure for mobile phone users was 37%.