Desktop online sales hit $56.4 billion this holiday season.
Digital sales on desktops grew 6 percent in 2015 reaching $56.4 billion, according to the latest data from comScore. Mobile spending increased by 59 percent over last year, reaching $12.7 billion, while overall digital commerce grew 13 percent to $69.1 billion.
The data showed that softer than anticipated desktop sales were also partially offset by stronger gains in mobile commerce, while Cyber Monday ranked as the heaviest spending day of the season for the sixth consecutive year. Spending on Cyber Monday reached more than $2 billion in desktop buying for the second year in a row.
Mobile commerce comprised 18 percent of the total digital commerce during the 2015 holiday shopping season, up from 13 percent last year.
comScore’s holiday season forecast had expected desktop e-commerce to grow 9 percent to $58.3 billion and mobile commerce to grow 47 percent to $11.7 billion. The actual data saw desktop spending fall short by 3 percentage points and $1.9 billion, mobile spending exceeded forecast by 12 percentage points and nearly $1 billion, helping to offset the shortfall on desktop.
comScore chairman emeritus Gian Fulgoni stated, “If there is an underlying takeaway from this holiday season, I think it will be remembered as the one where ‘mobile ate brick-and-mortar.’ Mobile became an essential shopping channel nearly doubling desktop in total retail traffic, while seeing growth rates approaching 60 percent year-over-year at the same time that offline retail experienced softness throughout the season. I believe that we’ve seen a paradigm shift in 2016 where the future of retail will increasingly be defined by consumers’ behavior on mobile.”
Earlier reports also saw mobile commerce surging this season. IBM data showed that mobile traffic accounted for 45 percent of all online traffic between November 1 and December 31, a 25 percent increase over last year. And IBM showed that while 77.3 percent of all online sales were completed on desktops, mobile accounted for 22.6 percent of all online sales, a 27 percent increase over 2014.
"It's a pretty dramatic change," Jay Henderson, director of strategy for IBM Smarter Commerce told USA Today. "It has really big implications for how retailers engage with customers..."
As mobile rises, retailers need to adopt new strategies that embrace their customers’ evolving behavior. Ravi Jariwala, Walmart spokesman, told USA Today, “When you can provide a very seamless experience…it strengthens the relationship that we can have with our customers. How do you give them technology that assists and transforms physical retail shopping? We operate with the assumption that 100 percent of our customers have smartphones. Because they eventually all will. So you have to plan for that.”
