Was 2014 the Year of Mobile?

If you’re in the northeast, we hope you’re staying warm today! But if things are slow at your business, or if you took a snow day today, why not use to the time to reflect on the business trends 2014. We’re going to share with you some shocking figures about how Americans did their shopping over the recent holiday season.

• Google has added the words “mobile friendly” to the snippet of text that follows the name of the website. This is because websites not formatted for mobile are frustrating to read on a tablet or phone. Being mobile friendly helps your page rankings.
• Walmart’s website had 1.5 billion customer page views. A full 70 percent of these page views came from mobile devices.
• By the end of Black Friday in the U.S., 46.7% of all online traffic was mobile,  24.2% higher than the previous year.
• On Black Friday, smartphones accounted for double the traffic of tablets: 33.6% over tablet’s12.8%. But tablets has more sales: 14.3% versus smartphones’ 11.7%.
• Apple iOS shoppers (whose phones are generally more expensive) spent an average of $127.34, which was than Android user’s $101.82.
• Paypal saw a 47% increase in PayPal mobile payment volume on Thanksgiving, and a 62% increase for Black Friday 2014 over last year.
• Paypal’s mobile app had a 43% increase in the number of customers using it to shop on Thanksgiving, and a 51% increase on Black Friday.
• Shoppers spent almost 42 percent of their holiday budget online.
• Target released this statement: “Mobile traffic made up 60 percent of Target.com traffic November through December.”
• Black Friday weekend purchases made via mobile phones were 2 times higher than 2013.
• Target’s digital coupon app, Cartwheel, gained 2 million new users over the holiday season.
• Store maps (for finding your way to the merchandise you want in the store) in Target’s iPhone app were used more than 400 thousand times.
• Amazon released this statement: “Nearly 60 percent of Amazon.com customers shopped using a mobile device this holiday. Mobile shopping accelerated as customers got later into the shopping season.”
• Mobile devices are now the biggest “attention medium” in the US, surpassing even television.
• US adults spend about 34 hours per month using the mobile internet on smartphones, compared to 27 hours per month on the internet at a desktop computer.
• 86% of those 34 monthly hours are on apps.
• Nielsen also says that “84 percent of smartphone and tablet owners say they use their devices as second-screens while watching TV at the same time.”

This is why MediaMark Spotlight always stresses having a mobile-friendly site. The numbers don’t lie: every year, more and more people access the web through their mobile devices, and the only sites they’re going to go to are the ones optimized for their smartphones and tablets.