Affiliate Window’s mobile data is drawn from over 3.5 million network transactions each month across 2,100 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.
Mapping smartphone growth across the network – smartphone now equals tablet revenue
We have been tracking mobile performance across the network since January 2011, where we saw just 2% of traffic from smartphone and tablet devices. Since then we’ve seen phenomenal growth of both click and sale performance from mobile devices, with mobile accounting for 64% of traffic and 42% of sales in Q3 2016. Smartphones have increased notably and now convert nearly 25% of total sales, driving 28% of traffic across the network.
On Boxing Day 2014 we saw mobile traffic reach 50% on the network for the first time, and across the Cyber weekend last year we saw the first instance where smartphone sales outpaced tablet, a trend which has continued throughout 2016. Smartphones also hold a strong conversion rate, up to 3.32% in Q3 2016, which is a percentage point higher than tablets in the same quarter. Now in Q3 this year we’ve seen smartphones equal the share of revenue driven by tablets, equating to 17.31% and 17.46% respectively.
The future for mobile performance is set to rise further as we enter Q4 where we typically see both enhanced conversion rates on all device types and more broadly the further adoptions of smartphones across the UK population. According to the latest mobile report from eMarketer, there are now 53 million mobile phone users in the UK of which there are 41.5m mobile phone internet users. The 25-34 age group sees the highest adoption of internet smartphone usage, standing at 95.9% of the total population. eMarketer also reports that Android mobile is set to grow further toward 2018 rising in smartphone usage from 55.7% this year to 57% by 2018. iPhone usage will likely plateau, up just 0.3% from 2016 to 2018 reaching 32.1%, and eroding only Windows Phone and Blackberry total usage share.
Looking at our own mobile tablet and smartphone total device data by Operating System, we’ve seen strong growth in Android devices reaching 56.78% of total mobile traffic, up from 36.29% in Q3 last year. Transactions have seen a slower growth of Android share, however, 30.29% of mobile transactions are now made on Android devices. iOS devices tend to drive a higher AOV at £67.10 in Q3 2016, versus £54.03 for Android devices, however, the gap is closing, with Androids closing 50% of the gap over the past two years.
Tablets remain a key traffic driver in Q3 taking sales share from desktops
Switching our attention to tablet devices, we’ve seen consistent and growing traffic levels from tablets accounting for 35.85% of all clicks on the network in Q3 2016, up from 32.77% last quarter.
We’ve also seen slight growth in tablet transactions up to 18.66% from 17.71% in Q2. This growth, however, gains share from desktop devices rather than smartphones which have grown at a higher rate for transactions (up 2.76% from Q2 2016), whereas desktops have declined to 57.91% of transactions (from 61.62% in Q2 2016).
AOV remains high on tablet devices standing at £71.42 for the quarter, down slightly from £72.75 in Q2 2016. Conversion rate is fairly consistent versus the previous quarter, however, is over 1% lower than smartphones and over 4% lower than desktops.