More than half of Canadian consumers use smartphones to make online purchases, survey shows

A majority of Canadians like to do their shopping online, according to a recent study. Omnichannel advertising platform StackAdapt has released its 2017 Omni Survey, which shows that 53 percent of Canadian consumers have used their smartphones to make online purchases at least once.

Meanwhile, 11 percent of this group make more than half of their online purchases using mobile devices. StackAdapt says this group is primarily made up of university educated, Generation X and Millennials (between 18-44) who bring in high annual earnings (less than $80,000 CAD).

Some other findings from the survey:

• 4 out of 10 consumers use mobile to purchase for entertainment (43 percent), digital products (41 percent) and consumer goods (39 percent)
• Female consumers who live with children under the age of 18 are more likely to make online purchases on their mobile devices than men
• Younger consumers using mobile devices to make online purchases are most likely to buy entertainment, digital products, clothes, services and financial products

However, companies may need to work on more mobile-optimized browsing experiences. The survey found that more than 82 percent of consumers using mobile to shop said there was at least one factor that prevented them from making an actual purchase on these devices. The most common reason for this, as reported by 54 percent of consumers, was due to the small screen of their devices. Poor landing page experience followed in second place with 33 percent.

Instead, more than 38 percent of respondents said they would discover a product on mobile and then go onto a larger device (desktop, tablet or laptop) to complete the transaction.

“Mobile presents a tremendous opportunity for brands,” said StackAdapt COO Vitaly Pecherskiy in a press release. “Currently, m-commerce represents around 1 percent of all retail sales and I now understand why. Brands are using old-school technology that relies solely on cookies — primarily a desktop solution, to track visitors or sales.”

He said that consumers jump between using a variety of devices, but because of the older tech being used, businesses are unable to track these spending patterns. “The longer they put off building a proper cross-device attribution model, the more challenges they will have when attempting to make sense of which channels are driving positive ROI [return on investment] for them.”

The survey includes data from LegerWeb that questioned more than 1,542 Canadians between July 10th-13th, 2017.

Image credit: Pexels

Source: Newswire