When Groupon announced its Q2 earnings last week, one of the most fascinating nuggets of info revealed by CEO Andrew Mason was the growing importance of mobile in driving transactions: “With nearly 1/3 of North American transactions in July originating from mobile devices, we are quickly becoming one of the largest mobile e-commerce companies out there.”
While mobile is still considered a rounding error for many digital businesses, there is broad acknowledgement that it is rapidly increasing in importance. But I think many would be surprised to see just how quickly it has become central to some big companies and what that tells us about the changing shape of digital business today.
In examining data from Comscore’s recently introduced behavioral mobile measurement service Mobile Metrix, we saw evidence that was consistent with what Mason reported during Groupon’s earnings call. We were surprised to find that Groupon – and its top competitor LivingSocial – are already attracting larger audiences on mobile devices than via the traditional desktop web. Groupon’s July 2012 mobile web + app audience (age 18+ on iOS, Android and RIM platforms) was 17.8 million visitors, while its comparable desktop audience was 12.4 million. LivingSocial had a total mobile audience of 8.8 million visitors vs. 7.3 million via desktop. If we just look at Groupon’s mobile web or mobile app audiences in isolation, they are each on par with its desktop audience, and the same can be said of LivingSocial’s mobile web audience.
Groupon and LivingSocial are two great examples of strong players in the m-commerce market, but it is worth examining why they fare particularly well in this channel. After all, not every e-commerce player maintains such an established mobile presence – and some are almost nowhere to be found.
There are several key factors that can make an e-commerce company more likely to perform well in the mobile environment, and to some extent each of the following advantages apply in some way to Groupon and LivingSocial.
Because Groupon and LivingSocial can boast several of these advantages, we should not be surprised to see them attracting large audiences via mobile. What is surprising is that we are seeing strong evidence that for some companies mobile might soon be a more important sales channel than desktop given its ability to generate a higher audience.
I suspect that as smartphone penetration soars past 50% of mobile devices this year, we will begin to see more businesses – and perhaps the industry as a whole – take mobile commerce much more seriously. The questions businesses must be asking themselves is whether or not they’re prepared to take advantage of mobile technology, and if the answer is ‘no’ will they be left at a permanent disadvantage in one of the most important commerce transitions we have seen in recent memory?