Bancomail - Smartphone and online shopping

Smartphones and online shopping is an increasingly strong connection. Around 20 million Italians (source Ipsos) use their mobile device to browse, and more than half of them use it anywhere.
Moreover should be considered the spread of e-commerce, which has allowed smartphone users to make their purchases easily and without limiting the space-time.
In this context, the role of protagonist is represented by the utilization of applications downloaded from the App Store in iTunes (which accounts for 80% of total), Google Android Market, Nokia Ovi Store, Windows Marketplace.
The most categories sought after by smartphone users are: clothing, music, audio-visual and publishing, but they are also popular trips, electronics, insurance and then food and other services, such as credit charging phone cards.
Specifically, the most products purchased via smartphone devices are digital ones: in September 2011, 47% of those who have purchased by "mobile" has bought music, film or digital books. Besides, we can find clothes and accessories (37%) and then the purchase of tickets for events (35%).
Smartphone users buy directly from home (56%), compared to 42% of “mobile” shoppers in other contexts (at work or away from home).

It’s important to consider the number of people using smartphones while they are in a store: almost one user in three use mobile device as a tool to compare prices in real time; this is an increasingly behavior as demonstrated that in September the two-thirds of smartphone owners have made at least one operation related to a trade: comparing prices to find discounts, taking a picture of a products or locating a store.
Consumers this year will therefore have two good allies such as mobile and web to make the traditional Christmas shopping, which will take place later, as Ebay Italy states.

The world's most popular marketplace web site also informed that 61% of Italians have started thinking about Christmas gifts only in December, and18% of them will wait for even the last days of holidays available: it is estimated that the peak day for purchases via mobile will be on 12 and 13 December and 19 December via web.

Reading this data and thinking about them, it’s increasingly clear the need of adapting web sites related to retail to mobile era, making them compatible to smartphones and tablets.