Mobile devices to drive over 50% of online Thanksgiving Day shopping

With Holiday shopping season already on, IBM predicts that for the first time ever, more than half of all Thanksgiving Day online shopping -roughly 53 percent- will come from a mobile device, up 23 percent year-over-year.

The power of big data and analytics will greatly help retailers this shopping season to access to data-driven insight to drive more personalized and targeted customer engagements, IBM said.

IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark tracks more than 370 performance indicators, also finds that Apple iOS devices will drive twice the traffic that of Android devices thanks to Apple’s dominance in mobile shopping experiences.

Mobile sales are also expected to grow, reaching 28 percent of all Thanksgiving online sales, an increase of more than 9 percent over 2013.

mobile online shopping

Another trend sweeping this holiday season are digital coupons that offer great savings to shoppers. Consumers will spend on average $123.28 per online order over the five-day holiday period, a decrease of 2.9 percent over 2013.

IBM predicts click-through rates for emails sent during the five-day shopping period will be 10 percent higher than the same period last year, thanks to data-driven insight which allows marketers to deliver personalized and relevant promotions. Here too, mobile devices will play a significant role, contributing 35 percent of all click-throughs.  The highest volume of emails is expected on Cyber Monday.

While smartphones will  continue to lead in mobile browsing over the five-day shopping period, accounting for 29 percent of all online traffic versus 15 percent for tablets,  tablets will account for twice as many mobile purchases than smartphones thanks to the larger screen size, IBM said.

Overall, the 2014 holiday shopping is set to hit new mark with online sales projected to increase 15 percent over the five-day period between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday.

The biggest increase in online sales is expected on Cyber Monday, predicted to grow 15.8 percent, followed closely by Thanksgiving with a projected increase of 15.6 percent while Black Friday online sales are expected to grow 13 percent.

Retailers can expect a four percent growth during the November and December shopping period mainly driven by health and beauty products contributing for 4.2 percent and 4.7 percent growth, respectively, followed by women’s clothing at 2.61 percent.

With the widespread use of smartphones for a wide variety of applications, IBM predicts mobile browsing will be the primary driver of online shopping. Mobile browsing is expected to account for 48.2 percent of all online traffic over the five-day period, an increase of 23 percent over last year.

Mobile sales are also expected to rise, accounting for 24.4 percent of all online sales, up 9.5 percent year-over-year.

IBM’s 2014 holiday shopping trends is compiled by collecting historical and real-time trend data from hundreds of retail websites. IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark tracks more than 370 performance indicators, the company said.

Rajani Baburajan

[email protected]

 

 

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