Forrester: Mobile Commerce to Quadruple to $31 Billion in Next 5 Years

Lauren Indvik2 days ago

Mobile commerce, or "mcommerce," has had a transformative (and highly publicized) impact on some businesses, including Amazon, eBay and flash sales sites like Gilt. But for the vast majority of retail companies, mobile represents only a neglible fraction of total sales, and it's likely to stay that way for the next half-decade, according to data from Forrester provided exclusively to Mashable.
Sales of physical retail goods and services made on smartphones were $8 billion in the U.S. last year, accounting for 3% of online sales and less than 1% of total retail sales. (Those numbers have been driven up by some outliers, like the aforementioned Amazon and eBay, which have mobile sales in the billions, per Forrester's estimates.) For most U.S. retailers, mobile represents only 1.5% of online sales. Over the next five years, total mobile sales are expected to grow 33% annually to $31 billion, making up 9% of online sales in 2017.

As someone who makes a purchase via a smartphone at least once per week, I wonder what's holding the rest of smartphone owners back. According to Forrester, of the 132 million Americans with an Internet-connected smartphone, only a quarter made a purchase on their devices last year.
The research outfit blames the low transaction rates on retailers, who have made it difficult for customers to check out and pay on smartphones, or are otherwise investing in apps that consumers aren't aware of. Although Forrester didn't mention it, we wonder if the smartphones themselves aren't partly to blame: Even with image-zooming capabilities, smartphones' screen sizes make it difficult to examine products closely, particularly in the apparel category.
With mobile retail sales still so small, is it worth investing in? Forrester says yes. Ensure that your mobile commerce site has a fast checkout solution, like PayPal Express or Checkout by Amazon. Make sure your mobile websites are responsively design so that it is optimized for the wide variety of device screen sizes on the market. And above all, invest in creating a great tablet experience — Although there are less of them out there, they're generating significant traffic and sales.
Image courtesy of Flickr, Ed Yourdon