Tablets beat smartphones in e-commerce

According to a new study by Monetate, tablets may just be the future of e-commerce, more so than mobiles or PCs, Direct Marketing News reports.

The study, which was released on 29 June, appeared in Monetate's Q1 E-commerce Quarterly report. The study found that, during Q1 2011, just 1.66% of all Web site visits came from tablets. During Q2, that percentage rose to 6.52%. The prominence of PCs as the conduit for e-commerce transactions and Web site visits is on a steady decline, Blair Lyon, VP of marketing at Monetate, says.

The conversion rate on PCs is about 3.51% of all visits. On a mobile device, that drops to 1.39%, but on tablets the rate is about the same as PCs, at 3.23%, according to the study.

Shoppers who are using tablets are much more similar to shoppers who use PCs than shoppers who are on their smartphones, CNBC writes.

They tend to view nearly the same number of Web pages per visit as tablet users, while smartphone users view fewer pages.

Monetate has also seen that the tablet user conversion rate, or the pace at which browsers become buyers, is pretty much equal to the conversion rate among PC shoppers, whereas few smartphone shoppers become buyers.

Monetate's numbers are more aggressive than previous figures from Adobe, which reported last month that tablet traffic worldwide will exceed smartphones by early 2013 and represent 10% of Web site traffic in early 2014, GigaOM notes.

The difference may be Monetate's focus on commerce Web sites, which may get more tablet traffic than other sites.

Kurt Heinemann, CMO of Monetate, says tablet traffic should hit double digits by this year's holiday season. He said tablets offer the best of both worlds, offering more of the portability of a smartphone but with a bigger UI that encourages shopping and browsing.