Trends on Tuesday: Mobile Sales Rise Substantially During Holiday Shopping Season

Were you surfing the pre-Black Friday online sales while waiting for the Thanksgiving turkey to appear on the table? Turns out, you weren’t alone.

“Online sales for Thanksgiving 2014 grew 12.2%, with mobile sales accounting for 74% of that traffic,” according to Mobile Marketing Watch. To put that in context, mobile sales grew 26.1% percent over 2013. Whether it’s Thanksgiving, Black Friday or Cyber Monday, mobile is playing an ever increasing role in holiday shopping.

IBM found that retailers had a decent Black Friday, with sales up over 8% from a year ago, and nearly 47% of online traffic coming from mobile devices throughout the day. Of course specific retailers differ in mobile traffic. For example in an article from TechCrunch, one large retailer reported a “whopping 70%” of online traffic coming from mobile devices over the Thanksgiving-Cyber Monday period.

As the public becomes ever more comfortable using their mobile devices for online shopping, going to desktop computers to find information and complete transactions with federal agencies will become annoying. Agencies need to consider mobile first approaches to providing services and information the public can access anytime, anywhere and on any device.