Synthetic Monitoring
Consumers Have Spoken: More Mobile
The modern holiday consumer has spoken: why brave the bad weather and crowds if you can accomplish your holiday shopping from the comfort of your home, and even better – using only your mobile device?
While Black Friday and the Thanksgiving weekend are still the busiest shopping days of the year, more and more consumers are skipping the mall crowds and instead doing their shopping online. Though in-store traffic numbers and total spending over the 4-day Thanksgiving weekend declined this year (from $57.4 billion in 2013 to $50.9 billion in 2014), the percentage of online and mobile shoppers continues to grow.
Black Friday Mobile Shopping Sales
Black Friday mobile sales accounted for 27.9% of all online sales, up 28.2% over 2013. Retail giant Walmart saw a whopping 70% of all online shopping traffic come from a mobile device (WOW!) over the 4-day weekend, and that’s only one example. Nearly every major retailer saw great leaps in online traffic, particularly from mobile.
Department Stores: Black Friday online sales grew by 22.9% over 2013, with mobile percentage of sales increasing by 25.7%.- Health and Beauty: Black Friday online sales grew by 56.9% over 2013, with mobile percentage of sales increasing by 31.8%.
- Home Goods: Black Friday online sales grew by 43.2% over 2013, with mobile percentage of sales increasing by 3.8%.
- Apparel: Black Friday online sales grew by 22.6% over 2013, with mobile percentage of sales increasing by 25.2%.
Department Stores: Black Friday online sales grew by 22.9% over 2013, with mobile percentage of sales increasing by 25.7%.In addition, and for the first time ever, online traffic from mobile devices outpaced traditional PCs on Thanksgiving Day.
Mobile Rising
The numbers don’t lie – mobile is definitely here to stay, in a big way.
In order to remain relevant and competitive in the retail market, it is essential businesses maintain mobile-friendly online storefronts.
However, this is only one piece of the puzzle. While responsive websites and native mobile applications are great, if they are slow or unreliable, consumers will move to your faster competitors.
A solid mobile strategy must focus on achieving and maintaining high performance. This includes performance-optimized design and development, regular load testing to assess maximum capacity limits, performance monitoring, and an emergency plan in the event of downtime or a serious dip in application performance.
Please get in touch with our team here at Apica if you need help navigating your mobile performance strategy.
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