The other month we produced an infographic at Rabbit about the growth of in-store mobile browsing – in particular the finding that 25% of online conversations about shopping happen in shops.

Comscore has now come out with another – possibly even more impactful – statistic, showing that (in the US) 1/3 of smartphone purchases were made inside a retailer.   In other words, people walk into a store, see an item and rather than taking it to the till, they buy it there and then online.

What does that mean for retailers?   Obviously if you are, say, a book seller such as Waterstones in the UK or Barnes and Noble in the US, you don’t really want people looking at books on the shelf and then ordering via their amazon smartphone app.

It could however be turned into an opportunity as well.

In the UK, £25 billion+ a year is spent on in-store point of sale material.  Rather than that money going on ‘buy one, get one free’ type offers, some of it could be used in building interactive displays.

Want to find out what other people are saying about this product?  Go online to our mobile site, or scan this QR code.   Is the queue at the till too long?   Order it here and we’ll deliver it to your house the next day.

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A series of interesting stats found via the Euromonitor blog, the over 45s will be heading to online stores this Christmas.  But they are also going to be your most demanding customers.

Euromonitor quotes Logan Tods Annual Online Shopping Index, which predicts that (UK) online sales will hit £1.26bn ($1.98bn) for Christmas 2010 – that means that UK consumers will be doing 23% more shopping online compared to 2009.   Not bad considering it’s – in theory anyway – coming at the end of a recession.

A lot of that growth is coming from the over 45s.   Good news – this group is the fastest growing, and it’s also the richest.   But it is also the group least likely to do their homework about you or put up with any glitches.   Seventy percent (70%) of older Internet surfers do research online before buying compared to 60% of all shoppers, and Logan Tod says that “this group is less willing to accept a poor customer experience.”

And the most important conversion factors?   Sensible stuff, rather than frills.   Ultimately it’s all about delivery options (68%), site search (67%), and well written copy (50%).

Image – Brian J Matis

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Top stat?  90% of 18-29 year olds take their mobiles to bed, and 70% of 30-49 year olds do so.     As that proportion of adults certainly isn’t married or even in a relationship, it shows how we’re essentially partnered up to our phones.

The second one that caught my eye was about teen texting.   The fact that younger age groups text more is well known,  but as the infographic shows, while most adults send under 10 texts a day, for teens, 29% send over 101!

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You know the received wisdom that you need time to make your YouTube videos a success, with people slowly discovering it and passing it on?  More often than not its wrong – according to TubeMogul (via Thought Gadgets) half the audience for the average online video will have come and gone within the first six days.

According to Business Insider our online attention spans are definitely getting shorter:

” In 2008, it took 14 days for a video to get 50% of its views and 44 days to get 75% of its views.”

In other words, the shelf life of the average video has now halved.  Some other stats that build on this one:

If supported by social media recommendations, people will be more engaged with your video.  Another TubeMogul and Brightcove survey found that music videos recommended on Twitter are watched on average for a minute longer.

In terms of the chances of your video becoming a huge hit with 1 million+ views, you are 6x more likely to get hit by a bus anyway

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First of all, most are discovered within two weeks of them being posted up.    If your video hasn’t gathered viral momentum in the first ten days or so of it going online, it probably won’t.

55% of video views are via “discovery”, people stumble on the video, mostly via blogs.   Get that online PR campaign going!

Then, after two minutes, over 3/4 of your audience will have zoned out and clicked somewhere else.   So keep those virals short.

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Buggy sites, difficult to understand navigation and a lack of features will leave Internet shoppers cold, with 60% of all consumers and 73% of “power shoppers” saying that their online shopping expectations had increased over the past twelve months.

Among the findings:

Variety is the spice of (online) life: Over half (57%) now consider themselves ‘sophisticated online shoppers’ and want retailers to try new and different things online

Yet at the same time, almost half (45%) say that most online retailers are by and large the same with price and availability the only real differentiators.   The opportunity is therefore for websites to concentrate on the overall experience.

According to Graeme Grant, COO at Allurent:

“The survey makes clear that the majority of consumers are now very comfortable with e-commerce. The question retailers now must ask themselves is: ‘What are we doing to meet the higher expectations of these sophisticated shoppers?’

“In 2009, I think we will see that those retailers who continue to innovate on their online shopping sites are the winners, while those who do not are left behind.”

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• Paradigm Shift: Retails 70%-22% Lead over Web Changes to 44%-49% (pindebit.blogspot.com)
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