Do You Need a Tablet App or Mobile App for Your Retail Business?

It’s All About Providing a Smooth Shopping Experience

A sudden influx of mobile devices has transformed the consumer buying behavior. Consumers are constantly in touch with their internet-connected devices and have the power to connect with any brand at any time. With the introduction of smartphones and tablets, marketers are also enjoying the benefits of increased awareness. With more and more avenues opening up for interacting with consumers, retailers, too, are focusing on ways to provide a smooth shopping experience, with mobile devices often taking the center stage.

Marketers always get perplexed when it comes to choose between a smartphone app and a tablet app.

Tablets and smartphones are both mobile devices. But both the devices have their own personas. For instance in Fig. 1, 72% of users use their smartphones for locating a store’s physical identity, whereas, 66% of tablet users look for product information on their device. Among other activities, users compare prices, check user reviews and ratings for various products and services before making a final call. [Source: latd.com]

Fig. 1

The International Data Corporation (IDC) research firm reported that tablet shipments in the first quarter of the year had totaled 49.2 million units.

The research firm Canalys recently forecast overall shipments of desktops, notebooks and tablets will reach 493.1 units this year; 7% higher than last year.

Tablets will account for 37% of the market, up from a quarter in 2012. And looking ahead to 2017, Canalys expects that 713.8 million PCs will ship worldwide - 64% of those will be tablets and 25% notebooks.

Number of tablet users is growing exponentially. According to the Forrester Report (fig. 2), by 2015, one in three U.S online consumers will be using a tablet. Forrester expects the number of tablets sold in the U.S. to go from 50.7 million last year to 67.7 million in 2013, and growing to 44 million in annual units sold by 2015.

The reports also projects that by 2015, 82 million people in the U.S. will own some sort of tablet.

Fig. 2

Global sales of tablet computers surged by 142.4 percent in the first quarter of 2013 as more and more consumers chose small-screen devices over PCs, research data from eMarketer show. As per the stats collected from twelve eCommerce site by PFSweb.com, as compared to tablets, in fig. 3, the percentage of visits on the sites is higher via mobile phones. But, the percentage of sales achieved through tablets visits is higher than the mobile phones. This shows that users are biased toward tablet devices.

Fig. 3

 More and more users use their tablet devices to view products pages and other related information which means rate of engagement is higher on the tablet devices than smartphones.[Fig.4]

Fig. 4

 Conversion rate is higher on the tablet devices (2.4%) as compared to the mobile devices (0.8%).[Fig.5]

Fig. 5

According to a recent forecast from Gartner, with tablets expected to outsell PCs by 2017, it is more important than ever that retailers offer tablet-optimized shopping experiences. Fig 5 describes the reason that why retailers should prefer a tablet app over a smartphone app. Forecasts from eMarketer show that tablet devices show a greater growth when it comes to purchasing, with tablets representing nearly 10% of all US retail sales by the end of 2013.[Fig.6]

Fig. 6

Every business’ ultimate aim is to achieve higher conversions. If you have a tablet app or site, chances are high that you will attain your goal a bit early as compared to businesses that have optimized their sites on smartphones. Fig. 7 clearly shows that tablet optimized sites increase conversion by 10% and raise average order volume by 15%.

Fig. 7

Tablets contribute 20% of e-commerce sales and among the total tablet owners, 60% of them already purchased goods from Tablets. The number shows that retailers can take their businesses at the maximum heights with the help of proper tablet marketing strategy.

For more information on mobile app development and marketing strategy send in your email to marketing@ymedialabs.com