According to a new survey from the National Retail Federation, a record number of people will be doing their holiday shopping online this year. In addition, those who do shop online will be spending more money than ever over the web. This is, of course, excellent news for any digital marketers who are looking to capitalize on the heavy spending that occurs this time of year.
The survey, which targeted more than 7500 people in early October, found that 56% of US shoppers will be doing some or all of their shopping online. On average, they expect that people will do about 44.4% of their spending online.
The survey is then broken down further to look at how people will be spending the money online. In it, they found that 55.7% of people who own smart phones will use them in some way for their holiday shopping experience. This is up from 53.8% last year. Of those, 35.8% will be using the smart phones to do research before they buy the products (either in person or online). 19.1% of smart phone owners will be using their devices to make actual purchases, which is a record number.
In addition to just asking whether or not people would be using their mobile devices to shop online, they also asked about how important it was for a website to have a mobile ready experience. 25% of those surveyed reported that a mobile ready website was an important factor when they were deciding where to shop online.
While none of these numbers are exactly shocking, it is important to keep in mind just how big the online holiday season is, and how you can use mobile to capitalize on it this year.