Tag: mobile commerce trends

Shop Direct sees mobile commerce profit increases

| November 4, 2014

The Barclay brothers owned online shopping group has reported a before tax profits quadrupling.

A recent report that was released by Shop Direct, an online and mobile commerce group owned by the Barclay brothers, and has reported that its before tax profits have now increased by four times, to reach £40.4 million.

The company owns a number of different online shops and saw profits for the first time in 2013.

Among the brands owned by Shop Direct are Very.co.uk, and Littlewoods. Despite that it had been in existence for a decade, the first time that it had ever turned a profit was last year. It has also now reported having seen a sales growth of 3 percent – the equivalent to £1.7 billion, during the year that led up to June 30, 2014.

According to the company, mobile commerce played a very important role in its increasing profitability.

Mobile Commerce - Mobile ShoppingWhen looking at the figures presented by the company, it is not difficult to understand why it is crediting users of smartphones and tablets to its earnings successes. Its m-commerce took a very large portion of its sales, as a tremendous 44 percent of its transactions took place on some kind of mobile device.

According to the chief executive of the company, Alex Baldock, these are very powerful results and were greatly driven by the increase in sales that took place from mobile devices, especially when it came to the Very.co.uk brand. He explained that “These are strong results, driven by the outstanding growth of Very.co.uk and the unrelenting boom in m-commerce. Mobile continues to be a game changer for us.”

This growth of shopping over mobile commerce at its newer brands such as Isme and Very.co.uk, has managed to offset the declining sales that it has been experiencing at some of its older “heritage businesses”. Its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) came to £164.8 million after having risen by 24 percent. The group’s largest business is now Very.co.uk, and it boasts sales of over £700 million. This has made Shop Direct another solid example of the way that retailers can evolve in order to embrace shopping over mobile devices.

Mobile commerce may make up all online shopping in India, soon

| October 22, 2014

Smartphones are rapidly taking over a larger share of the purchases that are being made over the internet.

According to recent statistics, it looks as though it won’t be very long before nearly all of the online shopping going on in India will be made up of mobile commerce based activities.

This data is according to one of the largest e-commerce companies in India, Snapdeal.com.

Snapdeal.com is now predicting that 90 percent of its orders will be purchased on its websites by users of smartphones, as those mobile devices become more affordable and make it possible for a growing number of people to reach the internet. This will bring millions of new customers exclusively to their website via mobile commerce. That marketplace has already been seeing massive increases in its figures as a result of this channel.

Mobile commerce will, therefore, become the most important online shopping channel in India in two years.

Mobile Commerce - IndiaOver the last year, Snapdeal.com, which is an online marketplace backed by eBay, has experienced a rise in m-commerce based purchases that has brought it to the point that it is now thirty times larger than it had been only twelve months ago. It has already reached the point in which nearly 70 percent of its orders are already being made by consumers who are accessing the websites by way of smartphones and tablets. According to the chief executive and co-founder of Snapdeal, Kunal Bahl, that percentage will only continue to increase.

Bahl explained that “It’s a tsunami of users over mobile phones.” He also expressed that approximately 65 percent of the consumers who make purchases over mobile devices are first time users of the site. The majority of those new years are in younger demographics and reside in smaller cities and towns across India in which broadband internet service has not yet become the standard., said Bahl.

Many of the users who make purchases via mobile commerce also do not have credit cards. For this reason, they take advantage of the opportunity to be able to have their purchases shipped to them, at which time they pay through cash on delivery.