M-commerce key for fashion sales this Xmas, but AOV lower than desktop

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Dec 9, 2019

Fashion shoppers are increasingly turning to their smartphones for their Christmas shopping this year and a new study shows that the majority of traffic and sales for fashion retailers online now comes through mobile.

The figures come from Nosto, an AI-powered e-commerce personalisation platform that analysed millions of shopping visits to fashion sites around the world over Black Friday weekend and Cyber Monday.

The results showed that more and more consumers want to shop for fashion on their phones, although these mobile shoppers still remain harder to convince to actually hit the buy button than those who are using a more traditional computer.

The figures showed that they spend less per order and also that they are more likely to abandon the site quickly and less likely overall to make a purchase. 

So looking at the figures themselves, we can see that phones account for 67% of traffic to fashion retail sites this festive season and 52% of sales revenue. Conversion rates on phones are running 53% higher than last year, "suggesting a large impact from both consumers growing more accustomed to buying fashion on their smartphones and retailers better utilising personalisation technologies”.

But while those 67% and 52% figures look good, and the surge in the conversion rate is impressive, the actual conversion rate is only 3.33%, and the average order value (AOV) in dollars is $97.71.

By contrast, traditional computers account for just under 28% of traffic and 43% of sales revenue. But the conversion rate is 6.2%, and the AOV $107.16. Tablets meanwhile are lagging way behind, accounting for a little over 4% of traffic, and 5% of sales revenue, with a 5% conversion rate. However, the AOV is higher than on smartphones at $101.72.

Nosto said the figures show a move towards phone shopping but that there “remains work to do for online retailers”.
 
“As they’re making shorter visits on a smaller screen, you’d expect mobile fashion shoppers to be harder to convince to make a purchase, and to be less likely to place larger orders — which we see in the data.” said Jim Lofgren, CEO of Nosto.
 
“But now that online fashion shopping is overwhelmingly mobile, being successful as a retailer comes down to having a truly mobile-first mentality — making it easy for shoppers to find their way around your site and quickly find just the products they want, and to check out with minimum effort.
 
“That’s where using artificial intelligence and machine learning to drive personalisation comes in. You can maximise the space and time on a mobile phone screen by automatically showing shoppers the most relevant shopping experience based on their behaviour — all in real-time.”
 
Overall, across all devices, the data showed a 15% rise in traffic year-on-year to fashion retail sites over the Black Friday and Cyber Monday long weekend, together with a 78% jump in online sales, "suggesting the large impact of personalisation on driving more revenue from each visit”.