Things are looking up at mobile commerce platform provider Unbound Commerce. According to the Q1 2014 edition of the vendor’s quarterly m-commerce index, which compares Q1 year over year smartphone shopping at more than 350 of Unbound’s retailer clients, sales on smartphones are up 101%, monthly unique visitors on smartphones are up 37%, page views on smartphones are up 56%, average order value on smartphones is up 12%, and conversion rates for shoppers on smartphones are up 29%.
“In almost every field we measure, mobile commerce continued to grow rapidly in Q1 2014,” says Wilson Kerr, Unbound Commerce’s vice president of business development and sales. “We are adding new user interface features and enhancements all the time to increase consumer adoption and reduce friction. This drives more revenue through a channel consumers are increasingly likely to use.”
Recent enhancements to m-commerce sites include the addition of product sliders to help merchandise, using slide-out windows to make more features available without cramping the initial screen of a page, and quicker page loads, Unbound Commerce says.
The total number of transactions on smartphones Q1 2014 over Q1 2013 was up 82%; the fact that this number lags behind total smartphone revenue shows that consumers are spending more per mobile transaction, Unbound Commerce says. The average order value on Unbound’s index jumped from $82.66 in Q1 2013 to $92.77 in Q1 2014, about a 12% jump. By comparison, average order value for all U.S. online commerce rose only 1.3% January 2014 over January 2013, according to research from Custora, an e-commerce analytics firm.
Unbound Commerce got its start building m-commerce sites for smartphones but has been expanding of late. It now builds tablet-optimized sites and mobile apps for smartphones and tablets. A growing number of Unbound clients are requesting tablet sites; the vendor simultaneously launched smartphone and tablet sites for multiple retailers in Q1 2014, Unbound says.
In addition, Unbound Commerce recently launched an in-store “Touch Commerce” offering, where large-format touchscreens are placed throughout a store so customers can access the full array of products a retailer sells. The touchscreen interface, which delivers rich media including video, is designed to bridge online and offline shopping, the vendor says.
Unbound Commerce has built smartphone and tablet sites for a wide variety of retailers, including Monster Cables, Shoe Carnival, Rockport, The Finish Line Inc., Miller Coors, The New England Patriots, and Cavenders.
Follow Bill Siwicki, managing editor, mobile commerce, at @IRmcommerce.
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