If mobile shopping were an Olympic sport - and let’s face it for some of us it is - the United Kingdom would be going home with the gold.

It’s not news that Great Britain is an e-commerce powerhouse, outpacing the United States in the percentage of retail sales that take place online. But a batch of recent research by xAd, Telmetrics, Nielsen and eMarketer has underscored just how enthusiastically UK consumers have embraced mobile - not just as a way to shop, but as a way to buy.

“The UK continues to lead globally when it comes to digital shoppers, buyers and ecommerce as a proportion of total retail sales,” say an eMarketer report synthesizing the research. “Mobile’s role in UK ecommerce is also well advanced. But more than merely facilitating commerce via search, showrooming and the like, mobile devices are becoming increasingly common as the means for making retail transactions.”

In fact, World Bank data shows that the United Kingdom is saturated when it comes to cell subscriptions (100 subscriptions per 100 people) and far ahead of the United States (63 subscriptions per 100).

And while many who study mobile use focus on conversion rates, Sarah Ohle, xAd’s director of marketing research, says there is plenty more to learn about mobile in both the UK and the United States.

“Mobile goes well beyond the actual purchase,” Ohle said of mobile’s influence in the shopping process. “The amazing and unique thing about mobile, is that people use it at all stages of their journey.”

Beyond turning to the UK for chants of “We’re No. 1,” though, retailers in the United States and elsewhere might comb through the findings on just how shoppers in Great Britain are using mobile devices in their pursuits of products and how mobile is driving sales on all channels.

First, a look at just how strongly mobile is coming on in the United Kingdom. eMarketers’ March report predicts that mobile commerce in the United Kingdom will account for nearly one-third of the region’s total e-commerce spending this year. In the U.S., the report says, the figure will be about 22 percent. By 2017 the figures will be 36 percent and 26 percent, according to eMarketer.

In some ways, the difference reflects what’s historically been a more enthusiastic adoption of e-commerce in general in the United Kingdom. In 2013, Cushman & Wakefield ranked the UK as the country with the most developed online retail market, followed by the United States, Germany and France, Business Insider reported. And eMarketer reported last summer that e-commerce made up about 13 percent of total retail sales in the UK, while amounting to 6.4 percent in the United States, a figure that is generally supported by other sources.

Bill Fisher, an analyst who covers the UK for eMarketer and worked on the most recent report, told me in an email that the UK lent itself to enthusiastic e-commerce adoption because its population consists of digitally-savvy consumers who’ve historically been comfortable with making credit card purchases. And he reiterated a point he made when we spoke last summer: The UK’s relatively compact geography most likely plays into the region’s embrace of e-commerce.

“The fulfillment issues in the UK were obviously going to be a lot easier than they would be in the U.S., because the U.S. is such a vast country,” Fisher told me last summer. “One distribution center in the UK and you could pretty much guarantee next-day delivery to most of the country.”

All of which leads to e-commerce being more tightly woven into the fabric of British life. Click-and-collect, or ordering online and picking up in a store is a real thing in Great Britain. Commuters pick up packages and groceries in subway stations and in their neighborhoods after ordering online. In the United States, the idea is around, but fledgling.

“I can order something online and I have something like six collection options, three of which are less than a five minute walk from my house,’’ Fisher, who lives in southern England, told me when we talked.

As for why mobile in particular is gaining such popularity in the UK, xAD pointed to factors that could well apply in the United States, too.

“As the mobile user experience continues to improve, consumers are turning to the convenience of their mobile devices more frequently, whether they’re at home or on the go,” Monica Ho, senior vice president of xAd, which conducted the UK path to purchase study, said in a news release.

Of course, the United States could well catch up with the UK when it comes to mobile saturation and conversion. Even if it doesn’t, mobile will no doubt continue to grow significantly. Which is where the lessons from the UK surveys come in.

The UK path to purchase work by xAd and Temetrics reinforced the notion that mobile is a powerful influencer when it comes to driving retail sales, whether the final sale is made on a mobile device or not. Among the company’s findings:

  • 83 percent of consumers surveyed made a purchase or planned to in the near future based on research made on a mobile device, with conversion split between online and offline.
  • More than a third used only their mobile devices to find information while deliberating over a purchase. 40 percent of mobile shoppers visited a brick-and-mortar location to supplement their research.
  • One quarter of mobile-related purchase are made in a brick-and-mortar store. (This is the flip side of Deloitte Digital research that found that smartphones drive 19 percent of in-store revenue.)
  • More than 50 percent of consumers started their shopping process on mobile devices.

While exact percentages vary, there are lessons about mobile that cut across geographies. For instance, Ohle said, the way consumers on both side of the Atlantic view mobile advertising is changing dramatically.

In fact, UK consumers in 2014 were 76 percent more likely to say that they found mobile ads helpful compared to 2013’s responses. In the U.S., 50 percent of consumers who responded in 2014 said they found mobile ads to be helpful, compared to 22 percent who gave that response in 2013.

“People are understanding the value of mobile advertising,” Ohle said. “If you ask them,
‘Do you want to get advertising in any form,’ people are going to say no. But if you realise the value that those ads are bringing you, either through consuming media or offering you value in the forms of discounts or locally relevant information, I think people are becoming more comfortable and receptive to it.”

While the specific percentages and shifts in consumer attitudes are interesting, the larger lesson, of course, is that mobile is a key channel whether it is the device that consumers are using to convert or not. The path to purchase has strayed far from the straight and narrow and is much more a series of loops and switchbacks. It is up to retailers to understand that new reality and make sure that they are ready to smooth the experience at every juncture.

And for now, they can look to the United Kingdom for a playbook.

 

By Mike Cassidy, Storyteller at BloomReach. 

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