With more than 60 million Americans forecast to own a tablet computer by the end of this year, retailers say tablets are driving an increasingly large share of their web revenue. According to the State of Retailing Online 2012 survey, which surveyed 59 companies and was conducted by Shop.org/Forrester Research Inc. (NASDAQ: FORR), 49 percent of retailers say their average order value via a tablet is now higher than traditional web sales, while nearly 28 percent of retailers say they are seeing about the same average order value from tablets.
According to the survey, tablet and smartphone sales, as a percent of retailers’ total web sales in 2011, were 3.2 percent and 1.5 percent, respectively. Eight in 10 retailers say search and email are the top two drivers of a company’s web traffic from either a smartphone or tablet. Additionally, retailers surveyed report that, on average, 20 percent of emails opened in a given campaign are opened on a mobile device. Seventy-five percent say they now offer customers QR codes and other barcode scanning options. While mid-size retailers rely more heavily on mobile email optimization, QR codes rank as the leading mobile marketing tool for companies with less than $10 million and more than $100 million in annual online sales.
Retailers are still adjusting to the sea of change that mobile is having on consumer shopping behavior and retailers’ marketing initiatives. Retailers say that, on average, 3.9 percent of their total interactive marketing budgets this year are dedicated to mobile advertising, suggesting a strategy of testing and measuring consumer response.
The State of Retailing Online 2012 will be available to Shop.org members in June and can be purchased at www.shop.org/soro. Forrester clients will be able to access the report as part of their subscription service two weeks from publication.
This post was originally written by Ali Mierzejewski and published by ToyBook.com. For more news, visit www.toybook.com, follow The Toy Book on Twitter, and like The Toy Book on Facebook. The Toy Book is a bimonthly trade magazine covering the toy industry, published by Adventure Publishing Group.
