Mobile now dominates ecommerce transactions in Asia: Criteo report

SINGAPORE – For the first time, the leading 25 percent of online retailers in Southeast Asia saw more than half of their sales coming from mobile devices, according to a new research report by Criteo.

In its 1H 2016 State of Mobile Commerce Report, mobile accounted for 60 percent and 54 percent of all ecommerce transactions in Taiwan and Southeast Asia, respectively. Across all Southeast Asian retailers, the mobile share of ecommerce transactions increased by 19 percent year-on-year.

The company noted that regional retailers that can capitalise on this trend will be successful at driving transactions in the shopping seasons that follow.

Yvonne Chang, Criteo’s executive managing director, Asia Pacific, said the region has been a mobile commerce powerhouse for a few years now, driven by multiple device ownership in developed markets like Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan. These markets are now being joined by rapidly growing “mobile-first” or “mobile-only” markets like India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam.

For the first time, smartphones delivered the majority of mobile transactions in every major global market, with the Asia Pacific region—Japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia and Taiwan—leading the charge.

Indonesia’s retail mobile transaction share, with more than 83 percent of transactions on smartphones (as compared to tablets), is both the highest and fastest growing within Southeast Asia.

For the Asia-Pacific region, the region-specific data highlights that retailers must focus on mobile optimisation for smaller screen sizes and on making their apps available on Google Play, rather than just the Apple App Store.

In Southeast Asia, the majority of mobile-commerce transactions are completed on Android devices—more than three times that of Apple devices, despite at least 10 percent year-on-year growth in transactions on both types of devices.

This is the reverse of the global trend, where the majority of mobile-commerce transactions today are completed on Apple devices.

“Mobile commerce has reached a tipping point and is surpassing desktop purchasing as regional retailers continue to invest in mobile-shopping platforms,” said Chang in a statement.

“However, retailers must go one step further and create a truly seamless mobile and cross-device experience to engage users along their digital paths to purchase,” she added. “Brands that master the mobile trend will have a headstart over competitors, as well as the momentum to lead the pack in the shopping seasons ahead.”

In addition, the report found that top retailers are building savvy, intuitive and useful shopping apps that give consumers a seamless way to shop on mobile devices. Capabilities like home-screen presence, instant loading, offline content, push notifications, personalisation and access to native functionality make the mobile shopping experience richer and more immersive for consumers.

Brands that can deliver this feature-rich environment and create a unified, consistent and relevant experience for shoppers regardless of device will succeed in driving retention and conversion rates.

Other report highlights include:

• Retailers with a sophisticated mobile app presence saw up to 54 percent of their mobile transactions generated in-app in Q2 2016, an increase from 47 percent in 2015.
• Apps close far more deals than other online shopping environments and convert three times more shoppers than mobile web.
• For the first time, mobile apps saw higher order values than desktop and the mobile web, with an average of US$127 spent in-app versus US$100 on desktop and US$91 on mobile web.
• Leaders in mobile app maturity drive 90 percent more conversions than emerging retailers.