News continues that mobile commerce is increasing, but how you can find out if this is true for your ecommerce site?

The news this month seems to suggest that our earlier predictions of tablets being big in 2012 is holding true. Stories such as Tablets slated to make a splash with retailers in 2012  and  Five million 'second tablets' to be bought in 2012 all point to 2012 being the year of the tablet.

If this isn't enough to make you sit up and take tablets seriously, in terms of numbers visiting your e-commerce site, then maybe a look at the analytics for your site will help confirm the trend.

How to Analyse Mobile Traffic to Your E-commerce site

Whilst there are a number of Web Analytics systems available, at Internet Logistics we find Google Analytics is by far the most popular at the moment. Google Analytics is free to use, and provides a comprehensive analytics package, including the recently rolled-out real time analytics. Google Analytics also provides specific e-commerce tracking, so you can see your conversion rate directly in the analytics package.

Another of Google Analytics recent additions is the Mobile Audience area of the Analytics site. As well as being given a simple statistic on how many visits are from mobile devices, it also allows you to drill down to see the detail of which mobile devices are used, and can even show you conversion rates for mobile devices.

Analysing the Data

Taking a look at the data we have available, from a wide range of e-commerce sites in different sectors, we analysed how the first 2 weeks of January 2012 have compared to the first 2 weeks in December 2011. This allows us to see if the trend for increasing mobile visits is true, and how tablets are driving these visits.

The top level information in Google is quick to find, using a combination of the standard Google Analytics visits data, the Mobile Audience analytics and Google Analytics ability to compare 2 date ranges, we were able to quickly build a picture of how mobile affects our web visits.

Tip: When viewing the Mobile Audience section of Google Analytics, the Devices subsection splits visits by individual device; clicking 'Operating System' above the data table, allows you to see a higher level view, with visits grouped by device, such as iPad and iPhone.

The Results

The below are averages taken from our set of data. Increases are based on total visits taken from the periods(01/01/2012 - 15/01/2012) and (01/12/2011 - 15/12/2011)

6% increase in visits from mobile devices

of these Mobile visits there was a 

9% increase in iPad visits

and a

5% increase in Android visits

Note that it is not possible to distinguish between Android Tablets and Android Phones in the Operating System level of Google Analytics, so Android  will contain Phone and Tablet visits.

What this means for E-commerce in 2012

1) Mobile visits to ecommerce sites are continuing to increase

2) Tablet visits to ecommerce sites are growing at a particularly fast rate

3) Android visits to ecommerce sites are also increasing, suggesting an increase usage of both Android smart phones and tablets

We hope to revisit this later in the year, from the current trends it seems that the year will continue to bring an increase in mobile visits, and that it is likely that tablet visits will increase faster than those from mobile phones.

If these trends are to continue, it is clear the 2012 is the year where e-commerce sites cannot chose to ignore their mobile customers, and that steps should be taken to ensure your site caters for Smartphone and tablet users. A look back at our blog posts on m-commerce from the past year is a great place to start for more information.

And for further help and advice on delivering mcommerce solutions, do not hesitate to contact us.