Half of all e-commerce in Asia to be via mobile: Criteo

Criteo, the performance marketing technology company, says in its Q4 2014 State of Mobile Commerce Report that mobile now accounts for more than 30% of e-commerce transactions globally.

Source: Criteo.

“There has been a significant lack of information about mobile commerce, leading many marketers to under-estimate the opportunity,” said Jonathan Wolf, Chief Product Officer at Criteo. “Our State of Mobile Commerce Report provides clarity on the global market, by drawing on our unique pool of transaction-level data covering billions of transactions. The report demonstrates that mobile is now about purchasing not just researching, and that there are huge opportunities for e-commerce businesses to capture increasing sales via mobile devices, particularly in the retail and travel industries. For Asia, we expect mobile to cross 50% of all online transactions in 2015, as mobile usage continues to skyrocket and retailers better optimise mobile sites for conversion.”

The findings in this report are based on Criteo’s analysis of individual transaction-level data from more than 3,000 e-commerce, retail and travel advertisers globally. Key takeaways include:

• Global mobile conversion rates are high, across all devices and retail categories.
• Smartphones now generate more transactions than tablets. Asia leads the way in smartphone purchases with close to 45% of e-commerce transactions happening on smartphones, and very little tablet share.
• Japan and South Korea are advanced markets for mobile shopping with over 45% of online retail transactions coming via mobile devices. In fact, Japanese e-commerce sites have mobile conversion rates that are double those in the US, and in 2015, Japan and South Korea are projected to generate more than 50% of their e-commerce transactions from mobile.
• A third of fashion transactions now come from mobile, with average order values close to desktop levels.
• Android’s share of smartphone transactions is also greater than one-third in Japan (43% for both retail and travel) and South Korea (86% for retail, 74% for travel). Top quartile retailers in Japan and South Korea generate over 65% of their e-commerce transactions from mobile, against the average of around 45% overall. 

“Consumers are more comfortable than ever making purchases from mobile devices, which makes it increasingly vital for advertisers to effectively reach them across devices,” said Wolf. “If you’re an e-commerce player and you’re not focusing on allowing mobile audiences to purchase from you, then you may not be in business in a couple of years.”

View Criteo’s Q4 2014 State Of Mobile Commerce report (Slideshare) here.