Whether it is the phone alarm waking you in the morning or that last minute Whatsapp to a friend before you go to bed - the smartphone is central to most people’s lives.
And now we’ve seen the rate at which consumers are choosing to shop on a mobile device, overtaking online shopping by four to one in the UK.
[1] New research from PayPal
[2] shows that nearly 60% of ‘millennials
[3]’ are browsing for new purchases on their smartphone every day. In fact, 30% of Brits expecting to use their smartphones to shop more often in the next 12 months, rising to 44% for 16 to 25-year olds.
Despite this, only 18% of small businesses in the UK have a website that adapts to the smaller screen size of the smartphone or tablet. Could that mean that 82% of small businesses are missing out on the mobile shopping boom?
The figures speak for themselves: the estimated annual spend on mobile nearly doubled from £13.5
[4] billion to £27 billion
[5] from 2016 to 2017 and it is estimated to hit £43 billion by 2020. We believe it is important that businesses don’t ignore the success of the smartphone and don’t miss out on this significant opportunity.
There are small changes businesses can make to give themselves a boost, and the top item should be making websites more mobile friendly for smartphone or tablet. Shoppers are increasingly frustrated by websites that require them to pinch the screen to zoom in and scroll endlessly to find miniature checkout buttons. Other considerations include thinking about the user experience as a whole, the navigation system, what options are there to add items to a shopping basket and what is the flow for making a purchase. It might be that you even consider an app for your loyal customer base. For more information about how to make your business more mobile friendly, please visit:
www.paypal.co.uk/mobilehelp
Also interesting to note that our research found that while shoppers of all ages are embracing new mobile-friendly payment methods such as digital wallets (preferred by one in three online shoppers), 40% of small businesses have never reviewed how they take payments.
For small businesses, adopting more popular modern payment methods could mean a big boost in sales. For over a third of businesses, the average value of an individual sale is between £10 and £30, but PayPal’s research shows that consumers are willing to pay up to three times that on digital devices: £84 on a smartphone, £103 on a tablet and £147 on a laptop.
Don’t just take our word for it,
OLPRO is a colourful and technical camping and caravanning gear company. They are a family business with the entire team having a background in the outdoor and leisure industry. Listen to its Founder and Managing Director give a taste of how thinking about mobile has boosted its business. Watch the video
here.
[1] Source: Research undertaken by PayPal and Ipsos into global attitudes to cross-border shopping, released in November 2016
[2] All statistics, unless otherwise stated, are taken from research conducted by Censuswide on behalf of PayPal between 11.08.17 - 16.08.17.
Censuswide surveyed 2018 consumers in the UK, aged 18+, and 2001 UK business owners with 50 or less employees.Censuswide abide by and employ members of the Market Research Society which is based on the ESOMAR principles.
[4] According to OC&C Strategy Consultants analysis of anonymised Google search and PayPal UK transaction data