Mobile shopping continues to be a major force for consumers, rapidly gaining traction with shoppers researching, comparing prices and sharing their choices online in one place.
Mobile spending is on track to rival desktop shopping by early 2024. Adobe Analytics, which analyzed online commerce transactions covering 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites and 100 million stock-keeping units across 18 product categories, predicts that tipping point will come within the coming months.
Specifically, mobile shopping dominated last year during the upcoming holiday season, and by 2025, Adobe predicts that mobile commerce will quickly surpass desktop shopping spending during non-holiday months.
The shift to mobile spending has been growing slowly but steadily, with 43% of online sales driven by mobile commerce in the 2021 holiday season. However, consumer sentiment is shifting toward faster, more convenient transactions, which is a big driver of the rise in mobile checkout. Adobe predicts that 53% of online sales will be driven by mobile devices in the upcoming 2024 holiday season.
In January 2024, mobile shopping accounted for about 47% of all online sales, and by July 2024, that number had risen to about 49%. The average share of mobile spending over the past seven months was nearly 48%, with $280.4 billion spent on mobile devices from January to July of this year, a 10.2% increase year over year.
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Another big driver was the rise in promotional events, with mobile spending outpacing desktop spending during major shopping events like Amazon’s Prime Day, Independence Day and Memorial Day sales.
The rise in mobile spending is fueling the rise in e-commerce categories such as groceries and personal goods, including cosmetics. Adobe Analytics reports that 77% of online sales in July 2024 were from mobile devices, with growth in cosmetics reaching $22.6 billion, an increase of nearly 8% year-over-year. Mobile spending is also a dominant force in apparel, with a share of mobile spending of almost 61% in July 2024.
For large retailers (defined as $1B+ in annual revenue), shoppers using mobile devices now account for approximately 53% of online sales on average each month. However, this is in stark contrast to smaller retailers (defined as $10M-100M in annual revenue), where mobile checkout averages 43% each month. Thus, there is an opportunity to grow revenue as mobile spending is seen as a key driver of impulse purchases.
“Adobe Analytics data shows that consumers are turning to mobile shopping for more frequent, lower-priced purchases, but we expect higher-value purchases to start moving to smaller screens as well,” said Vivek Pandya, principal analyst at Adobe Digital Insights. “Adobe data shows that shopping cart size is 32 percent smaller on mobile than on desktop, presenting both a challenge and opportunity for brands to improve mobile experiences and close the gap to grow revenue.”
