Only a month ago we posted a blog on the online shopping boom on tablet computers and we’ve seen further evidence of this shift from PC’s to tablet home shopping on Boxing Day 2013. Boxing Day is the traditional day for retailers to start their sales and this year was Britain’s biggest and busiest shopping day ever according to data from Experian Hitwise for online retailers in the UK.
Tablet devices also accounted for more than a third of conversions, revenue and spend from UK retail paid search on Boxing Day. In an econsultancy blog it analysed data from Kenshoo and talked about the success of the paid for search campaigns by UK retailers.
The exact findings from Kenshoo show that UK retail search advertisers saw their ad revenue double year-on-year, with tablets accounting for:
- 35% of spend vs. 50% on desktop
- 37% of conversions vs. 55% on desktop
- 38% of revenue vs. 56% on desktop
These figures further indicate that online retailing is dominating retail and despite retailers’ efforts to attract “footfall” – people visiting High Street shops – including opening early on Boxing Day – internet orders are becoming more and more important each year.
Analysts Experian said actual “Footfall” was down 7.6% in the week leading up to Christmas, in part due to the increasing popularity of online shopping.
Smartphones continue to be used for consumer research with the majority of Boxing Day traffic to UK retail websites coming from mobile devices, according to IBM. But while tablets drove sales, smartphones proved to be the most popular device for browsing.
Smartphones drove 29.9% of all online traffic versus tablets at 28%. When it came to making purchases, tablet users drove 29.4% of online sales, which was nearly twice that of smartphones users, who drove 15.8%.
The IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark reveals that on Thursday 26 December online sales increased by 40.4% compared to Boxing Day 2012.
Retail marketers will be capitalising on the shift towards smartphones and tablets and adjusting their PPC campaigns towards those devices going forward.
