• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, November 26, 2014

While many holiday shoppers will be heads-down on their phones as they shop their favorite retailers, it likely won’t be apps they’re looking at.

Retailers have consistently told me that most of their commerce traffic comes from their mobile websites, not their apps. This is despite that many retailers have poured considerable resource into app development.

It turns out that 85% of total traffic of large retailers comes from mobile websites with 15% coming via apps, based on an analysis of billons of user sessions leading to retailers’ websites and apps over the last year.

The Mobile Commerce Trends Report by Milward Brown’s Compete for Skava, which provides the mobile commerce engine for very large retailers, found a 112% increase in mobile traffic to retailer websites with desktop traffic dropping 4%.

In addition to dominating mobile traffic, mobile websites also led sales from apps – by a lot.

Of online mobile purchases, 90% came from mobile websites and 10% through apps.

Apple lost a bit of mobile commerce ground going from generating 67% of the entire mobile revenue for retailers in the first quarter to 62% two quarters later. Android mobile sales increased 5% during the same period.

Some retailers have told me that many of their loyal customers tend to use their apps so they can’t really consider abandoning their app efforts.

No matter how they buy, shoppers are increasingly turning to mobile.