Affiliate Window’s mobile data is drawn from over 3.5m network transactions each month across 1,600 advertisers spanning the retail, travel and telecoms sectors. Clients we work with include John Lewis, Marks & Spencer, British Telecom and lastminute.com.
Working with around half the top 100 retail brands in the UK as well as over 1,000 SMEs allows us to build a comprehensive picture of the mobile landscape.
Mobile sales growth in Q3 in spite of traffic drops
We have seen interesting results for mobile commerce this quarter, with overall key performance metrics increasing in Q3, even though mobile traffic has slightly decreased. Traffic from mobile devices dropped by just over 1 percentage point from the previous quarter with 46.93% of all traffic now being driven from a mobile device in Q3.
Looking more closely at mobile traffic, we saw the drop in clicks was seen predominantly from smartphones to 24.48% of total traffic, down from 26.50% in Q2 of this year. Tablet devices have maintained their share of traffic, at 19.18% this quarter down negligibly from 19.22% in Q2, however this is still considerably below the traffic results for smartphone, This shows a continued preference for smartphones as browsing devices within the channel. As a result of mobile traffic drops, desktop share of traffic has increased to 51.02% after declining below 50% last quarter.
Interestingly the results switch when we look at mobile commerce sales, which have improved to 37.19% this quarter up from 36.88% in Q2. This quarter’s share of total sales is also over 5 percentage points higher than the same result in Q3 last year. On a device type level, we have seen the mobile sales growth come exclusively from smartphones, increasing to 17.81% of total sales, compared to 17% the previous quarter. Conversely tablet devices dropped slightly in share to 19.34% from 19.72% in Q2, narrowing the traditional sales gap we have seen between smartphones and tablets.
This has had a resulting impact on smartphone conversion rates which have improved across the network for mobile devices up to 3.78% from 3.6% last quarter. Comparatively non mobile devices dropped to 5.80% in Q3 from 5.91% in the previous quarter. As with sales, conversion rates have improved largely across smartphones up nearly half a percent to 3.47% in Q3 versus 4.81% for tablets in the same period, showing consumers’ confidence to purchase on smartphones increasing as well as browsing.
In terms of AOV we have also seen an overall improvement for smartphones, further indicating increased consumer confidence to purchase higher amounts through this device type. AOV for smartphones rose to £54.49 this quarter up from £53.12 in Q2. Tablet devices have seen a minor increase too to £74.80 in Q3 from £74.43.
Apple vs. Android
Looking more closely at Apple and Android results for smartphones in Q3, we have seen a slight increase in iPhone performance to 79.58% (traffic) and 75.59% (sales) versus Android (21.37% traffic and 21.88% sales), however this quarter’s increase for iPhone against Android is plateauing versus the difference between Q1 and Q2.
With Apple and Android tablets, we have continued to see the converse trend, with Android tablets continuing to increase in share of traffic in Q3 to 55.33%, up from 52.40% in the previous quarter versus iPads at 44.67% this quarter, and 47.60% in Q2. In terms of sales, Android tablets still hold a smaller share than iPads, however the gap is closing. Android tablets are nearly at a third of all tablet sales this quarter (29.34%), versus 68.14% for iPads, showing that iPads are still a stronger converting device for online consumers than Android for tablet devices. There is still nearly 5 percentage points difference in conversion rates this quarter between iPads (7.33%) and Android tablets (2.55%). Last year we saw an increase in mobile conversion rates in Q4 around Christmas peak periods, which could assist these results in the coming quarter.
On an AOV level for smartphones, we have seen Android devices drawer closer with iPhones, rising to £52.60 in Q3 versus £55.32 for iPhones. By contrast with tablet devices we have seen a stronger increase from the iPad AOV this quarter up to £82.97 nearly 50% higher than Android tablets at £56.59 in the same period.
