Mobile drove more than one out of every four visits to e-commerce sites in last year's final quarter.
Android phones and tablets saw their share of that traffic grow at the iPad's expense, according to new Monetate data.
- Smartphones and tablets combined for 27% of traffic to e-commerce websites, compared to 73% from PCs. Mobile's share is up three percentage points from the previous quarter and up nearly nine percentage points from the fourth quarter a year prior.
- The skew toward tablets in online retail activity was apparent in the fourth quarter, with tablets accounting for about 15% of the mobile share, and smartphones making up the remaining 12%.
- The iPad's dominance is beginning to loosen. Its share of total mobile e-commerce traffic fell one percentage point from the previous quarter to 48%, but is down from a peak share of 51% in the second quarter of 2013. Android phones and tablets siphoned off most of that share from the iPad.
- Android tablets grabbed 6% of all traffic, which is up from 5% in the previous quarter, and twice the share in the same quarter a year prior.
As we discussed in our report on mobile commerce, smartphones and tablets should be looked at separately in the context of e-commerce, because they serve specific purposes.
The biggest difference between the two, and the reason tablets are the more successful e-commerce vehicle, is that tablets are used both at the beginning of the shopping process, for high-level research and at the end to finalize purchases. Meanwhile, shoppers tend to utilize their smartphones for quick middle-of-the-process research tasks, like locating stores and comparing prices.
Click here to download the charts and data in Excel
Here's a chart detailing the e-commerce traffic shares of the individual mobile platforms and their devices, but looking only at mobile.
It's clear the iPad has lost share. Meanwhile, the iPhone's share of traffic held steady at 27% throughout 2013, but that share is down from 29% in the fourth quarter a year ago.
