In the past six months how many times, if at all, have you used your smartphone to make a purchase from a mobile website or using a mobile app?

However the IMRG stats also serve to underline the fact that the mobile web is primarily used for research and browsing rather than making purchases, as m-commerce sales lag far behind site traffic from mobile devices.

As mentioned, 23.2% of online sales came from mobile devices in Q2 2013, however smartphones and tablets accounted for 34% of visits to ecommerce sites (up from 21.1% in Q2 2012).

Click-and-collect

The new report also states that there was a significant rise in ‘click and collect’ sales in Q2, reaching a record high of 16% of online sales for multichannel retailers. 

This represents annual growth of 33%, up from 12% in the same period last year.

Click and collect has proven to be very effective at driving online sales and was a key factor behind New Look’s recent 79% jump in online sales.

Similarly, Argos’ ‘Check and Reserve’ service accounted for 31% of online sales in Q4 2012, while Halfords introduced a click and collect service three years ago and now 86% of all its online sales are for in-store collection.

To find out more about what it takes to be a successful multichannel marketer, come to Econsultancy’s JUMP event on October 9. Now in its fourth year, JUMP will be attended by more than 1,200 senior client-side marketers. This year it forms part of our week-long Festival of Marketing extravaganza.

Bounce rates

Finally, the switch in device usage also appears to have had a knock-on effect on bounce rates.

At the beginning of 2010 over 97% of retail site access was through a desktop. Over the subsequent three years, as mobile device access began to grow rapidly, the bounce rate rose from 21.7% in 2010 to 23.7% in 2011, before reaching 27% in 2012. Year to date in 2013, the bounce rate is 26%.

This could be caused by consumers researching product options and prices on a mobile device before they eventually make a purchase on desktop.

The IMRG Capgemini figures come from The Quarterly Benchmarking Index which tracks over 40 key performance indicators across seven categories.