This year’s holiday season saw a sizable boost in e-commerce holiday sales, jumping from $52 billion in 2013 to $61 billion in 2014. Studies show that greater desktop e-commerce sales and mobile commerce sales contributed to the growth, continuing the trend of shoppers turning away from brick-and-mortar stores in favor of online shopping. With greater e-commerce sales being seen year after year, what can we expect for the 2015 holiday season?
2014 Brings More E-Commerce Holiday Sales
The predicted numbers represent a continuation in the growing trend of U.S. shoppers turning to their computers and smartphones to purchase products. While the numbers show promising signs for e-commerce merchants, many are left wondering why people are starting to prefer online shopping versus in-store shopping.
- Ease of Use—With the growing number of high-speed internet connections and mobile devices, many American shoppers are doing their holiday shopping entirely online. This allows them to stay at home while shopping, avoid crowds, and still receive their purchases on time. With the improved services in the payments industry, checkout processes are made easier than ever.
- Fraud—E-Commerce holiday sales may have jumped so high due to fear over credit card fraud. The 2013 holiday season was marred by massive data breaches from Target stores, exposing millions of customers’ financial information. This resulted in many shoppers avoiding the swipe POS terminals found in stores all across the country, and turning to more secure online sites instead.
- Shipping Improvements—2014 also saw more improvements within the shipping industry, providing consumers with greater abilities to track and manage their online purchases. With more advancements surely to come in the future, many predict that e-commerce holiday salesin 2015 will be even higher.
Mobile Commerce Makes Breakthrough
A large part of the increase in e-commerce sales this holiday season was due to mobile purchases. While desktop e-commerce sales still represented the vast majority of the $61 billion, mobile sales grew by 25% from 2013. This increase is almost double that which desktop sales saw.
With technological advancements in mobile payments, such as Apple Pay, it should come as no surprise that more people are shopping on their mobile devices. Many retailers have developed comprehensive apps and mobile websites that cater to the needs of consumers during the holidays, like fast checkout and exclusive coupons. As these options become more available to consumers over the next year, 2015 will surely see another major jump in mobile commerce.
About Instabill
Instabill is a global merchant services provider based in the US. For more than a decade, we’ve provided internet and retail merchant accounts to businesses in many industries all over the world. Since many of our clients and partners are e-commerce business owners, we follow online and mobile sales trends closely to spread the latest news. For more information, simply contact us online today. You can also call 1-800-318-2713 to speak with a representative today.
