29 March 2024, 14:31
By Furniture News Feb 03, 2016

Mobile share of visits to UK retail sites increases to 64%

Smartphone shopping is now the default for UK shoppers, with 64% of all website visits to retailers last year coming from mobile devices, according to digital market intelligence company, SimilarWeb. The study revealed that on average 64.54% of visits to all online retail sites in the UK last year were via mobile phones, compared to 35.46% for desktop.

This reflected a further 2.63% increase for mobile’s market share in the online UK retail market last year. The UK now has a bigger share of mobile phone shopping than the US (55%), Germany (43%) and France (35%). However India remained the standout leader for mobile shopping, with a 65% share, over desktop, last year.

On average, over 2015, all of the most popular 10 UK retail sites, including Amazon, eBay and Argos, registered a bigger share of visits from mobile, compared to desktop visits.

While on average UK desktop visitors browsed 12.4 pages per session in 2015, this dropped to seven pages when sites were visited via smartphones.

Similarly, on desktop, UK shoppers spent seven minutes on an average retail site viewed from desktop last year, dropping to an average of five minutes on a mobile device.

Pavel Tuchinsky, SimilarWeb digital insights manager, says: “Shopping via mobile is now the default, with all leading retailers experiencing a majority of visits to their sites via smartphones. The UK is now a European leader in mobile shopping, far ahead of France, and Germany. However engagement and time on site has not been maintained in the transition towards mobile shopping. Retailers must continue to embrace the rapid change towards mobile, including better checkout flows, and integrations between desktop and mobile sites.”

Top UK retail sites average monthly mobile share by visits in 2015 are detailed below:

- Amazon 64%
- eBay 59%
- Argos 76%
- Tesco 71%
- Next 72%
- Asos 62%
- John Lewis 60%
- M&S 62%
- Currys 70%
- Boots 75%

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