Ecom­merce is grow­ing fast and mobile devices are fuelling that growth. How can brands bet­ter under­stand their con­sumers and the way they are seek­ing out prod­ucts and eval­u­at­ing retail­ers?

The 500 lead­ing retail­ers in mobile com­merce will see sales of $83.78 bil­lion by the end of 2014, accord­ing to a new fore­cast from Inter­net Retail­er.

Mobile sales will account for 21.2 per­cent of an esti­mat­ed $394.71 bil­lion in total web sales by retail­ers that make up Inter­net Retail­er’s Mobile 500 list.

The fig­ure also rep­re­sents a 79.9 per­cent rise from the $46.56 bil­lion in sales that the lead­ing 500 mobile com­merce brands achieved in 2013.

Highlights & Trends

Trends revealed in the report cen­ter around increased use of hand­held devices, respon­sive design, and a rise in the num­ber and preva­lence of apps offered by m‑commerce retail­ers.

1. Tablet Sales Outnumber Smartphone Sales, But Not For Long

Of the $83.78 bil­lion in 2014 mobile sales, 59 per­cent will be from tablet devices, and 41 per­cent from smart­phones. How­ev­er, as high­light­ed in the report:

“…many m‑commerce experts pre­dict that the rise of larg­er smart­phones com­bined with ongo­ing mobile tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ments that make buy­ing eas­i­er on smart­phones — such as Apple open­ing up its bio­met­ric fin­ger­print scan­ner to devel­op­ers to enable one-touch log-in and one-touch check­out — will tilt the mobile sales scales in favor of smart­phones in the years to come.”

2. Big Rise In Responsive Design

The num­ber of retail­ers in the Mobile 500 with respon­sive design web­sites increased 164 per­cent in com­par­i­son to 2014. The respon­sive design approach, which aims to opti­mize view­ing and inter­ac­tions across devices, nat­u­ral­ly increas­es user con­fi­dence in mak­ing their trans­ac­tions via the device they have been using for research rather than switch­ing to a desk­top.

More than one-fifth of the all m‑commerce retail­ers now have respon­sive design web­sites, and devel­op­ers and oth­er mobile experts pre­dict that num­ber could rise to 50 per­cent of all m‑commerce retail­ers by next year.

3. Increased Number & Use Of Apps

About 42 per­cent of mobile sales are now made from mobile apps, while near­ly 58 per­cent come from web­sites on smart­phones and tablets.

The num­ber of apps offered by top retail­ers and the num­ber of retail­ers offer­ing apps have each increased sig­nif­i­cant­ly. And it’s easy to see why: on aver­age, mobile retail­ers will gain about 30 per­cent of it’s mobile sales from apps, and this is expect­ed to con­tin­ue to increase next year.

Providing A 100% Mobile Experience

Over­all, Inter­net Retail­er’s report reveals a clear trend: that con­sumers are increas­ing­ly using their mobile devices, and are becom­ing less reliant on desk­tops to make online pur­chas­es.

In many cas­es, retail­ers aren’t far away from pro­vid­ing com­plete­ly mobile expe­ri­ences, where users have all the choic­es that a retail­er offers, via any cho­sen device.

As Paul Cousineau, direc­tor of mobile shop­ping at Amazon.com states in the report:

“[Ama­zon wants] a cus­tomer to be able to have 100% of their rela­tion­ship with Ama­zon on any device they choose. … Mobile is a trans­for­ma­tive tech­nol­o­gy. As our per­cent­age of cus­tomers adopt­ing mobile con­tin­ues to grow, mobile can no longer be a lim­it­ed sub­set of fea­tures or prod­ucts. Peo­ple do not put their phone down then go find a desk­top to do some­thing. They use their phone. And we think with clever use of func­tions and design, it is pos­si­ble to give mobile cus­tomers 100%.”

This arti­cle first appeared on the Linkdex blog.

Are you see­ing a rise in the num­ber of con­sumers using their mobile devices to pur­chase from you?