Mobile Commerce Growth Spurs Thanksgiving Sales

According to an IBM Benchmark report, mobile had a significant impact in lifting online sales on Thanksgiving by 17.4 percent over 2011. Here are some more key points from the report:

• The big winners were retailers who connected consumers with personalized deals across multiple screens, including PCs, smartphones and tablets.
• Mobile traffic: The number of consumers using a mobile device to visit a retailer's website reached 25.3 percent, up 66.2 percent over 2011.
• Mobile shopping: The number of consumers using their mobile device to make a purchase increased to 18.3 percent, up 65.3 percent over last year.
• Mobile email: Smartphone and tablet shoppers responded to email deals from retailers, with emails opened on mobile devices jumping 23 percent on Thanksgiving Day over 2011.
• Couch commerce: In the evening hours, consumers shifted from shopping via their smartphones at the dinner table to buying through their iPad on the couch. At the end of the day, the iPad drove more retail traffic than any other device (10.7 percent), ahead of the iPhone (9.1 percent) and Android devices (5.8 percent).
• Social shopping: Visitors referred from social networks such as Facebook and Twitter increased in evening hours, generating .63 percent of all online sales on Thanksgiving.