Apps fuel Cyber weekend mobile shopping growth

Friday, December 2, 2016 - 11:47 by Mike Price

With a wealth of data on the shopping habits of Brits exhibited across the Black Friday and Cyber Monday period flooding in, it seems that this year the big winner was mobile, with retail apps apparently playing a big part in generating sales, according to Poq.

On average, people who made purchases online through dedicated apps spent 175 per cent more in 2016 than they did during the same period last year. This shows that consumers are shifting their spending power away from desktop and laptop computers and towards the mobile sphere, with apps being trusted to handle high value transactions.

Furthermore, app downloads were up by 350 per cent year on year, with retailers taking advantage of the ability to send out notifications to customers who had installed their software in order to remind them about the deals which were available.

Interestingly, there were other changes to consumer trends reported this year, with a quarter of all Cyber weekend sales taking place between the hours of 7am and 10am each day. This is a shift away from past practices, as people used to leave their sprees of safe shopping online until the evening hours after work.

For many years, people were reluctant to make purchases via smartphones, instead focusing on them as a research tool while choosing to use traditional PCs to complete transactions. This is no longer the case and while using mobile sites to shop is widely popular, apps are also playing a big part in convincing consumers that portable devices are safe.

Analysts also noted that retailers were getting into the swing of this particular discount period, extending offers over multiple days in order to maximise their impact and gain more attention from shoppers across the UK.