Smartphones are responsible for more online store visits than desktop computers in the U.K. according to Monetate.

Retailers who aren’t ready for mobile shoppers risk losing out on a growing amount of traffic.

The shift to smartphones that has been building for the past few years continued in a big way in the past year. Fewer shoppers worldwide are visiting online stores on desktops and tablets than they were a year ago, according to a quarterly report from digital marketing firm Monetate titled “How is everyone shopping, anyway?”

Here’s how things break down by device:

  • 52.96% of online shopping visits came on desktop devices during Q1 2016, compared to 60.21% during the same time last year.
  • 32.63% of online shopping visits came on smartphones, compared to 23.25% last year.
  • 14.53% of online shopping visits came on tablets, compared to 16.55% a year ago.

The evolution of shopper preferences by device was most evident in the U.K., where smartphones (38.38%) were responsible for more online shopping traffic than desktop computers (37.47%).

But while more shoppers are visiting sites on their smartphones, they’re still more likely to buy on their desktop devices. Globally, the conversion rate for shoppers visiting a website on their desktop devices was 3.89% in Q1 2016 compared to 1.43% for smartphones. In the U.K., where smartphone e-commerce visits have eclipsed desktop visits, desktop (5.85%) still converts better than smartphones (2.83%).

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