Online retailers receive more mobile visitors

Monday, February 8, 2016 - 09:47 by Paul Tissington

Last year the number of people browsing the web from their smartphones and tablets overtook desktop usage for the first time. And now a report from SimilarWeb has revealed the extent to which different retailers are receiving mobile visitors.

Of the major e-commerce sites covered, eBay was interestingly home to the lowest level of mobile users, with 59 per cent of traffic generated by smartphones.

At the upper end of the scale, Argos managed to encourage more of its customers to carry out safe shopping online from a portable device than any of its rivals, with mobiles nabbing a 76 per cent share of traffic.

Boots came in at second place with 75 per cent, with Next behind it on 72 per cent, showing that traditional high street firms are also embracing m-commerce.

Amazon, which is the UK’s biggest online retailer in terms of sales, saw 64 per cent of its traffic generated by mobile users in 2015.

The fact that even the retailers which experience the lowest percentage of visitors using mobile devices are still dealing with well over half of their customers choosing m-commerce over desktop browsing, is impressive. And yet there are regular surveys which indicate that plenty of people are still dissatisfied with the shopping experience that is available to them on smartphones.

Last year, the introduction of Google’s mobile-friendly search algorithm update did encourage many companies to optimise their sites for mobile visitors. But consumers are not just looking for pages to appear correctly on touchscreen devices; they also want access to all the products, features and functions which are found on the desktop site, along with consistent continuity between both platforms.

Retail apps are also an important part of safe shopping online, but for the moment, it seems that mobile browsing is capturing the majority of the market.