Smartphones to Be Top Device for Holiday Online Shopping, Says Salesforce

Mobile shopping will dominate the upcoming holiday season, delivering 68 percent of all e-commerce traffic, said a Wednesday Salesforce report. For the first time, more orders and visits to e-commerce sites will be made on phones -- 46 percent -- than on any other device, including computers (44 percent) and tablets (9 percent), it said. Artificial intelligence-based product recommendations will drive 35 percent of all digital holiday shopping revenue, forecast to grow 13 percent vs. 2017. Cyber Week -- the Tuesday before Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday -- will account for 40 percent of all holiday season digital revenue worldwide, it projected, while Black Friday will capture 10 percent, followed by Cyber Monday at 8 percent. Mobile traffic will peak on Christmas Eve, Salesforce said, when consumers expect to make 72 percent of visits and 54 percent of orders. Free shipping will continue to be important to consumers, with 72 percent of e-commerce orders expected to ship for free, a “slight increase” over 2017, it said. Some 83 percent of shoppers ages 18-44 say they use phones to shop while in a physical store, said analyst Rick Kenney. Instagram is predicted to be the fastest growing social channel for referring digital traffic to retail sites, growing 51 percent year on year, while Facebook will see a 7 percent growth decline.