How mobile is affecting commerce this holiday season

The ability to shop from anywhere has deals exploding as retailers try to get your attention

You may have noticed a trend this year of extended shopping deals. Whereas it used to be that people would get exclusive deals for Black Friday, then Cyber Monday, now these sales are extending to a whole week.

To wit, Walmart recently announced price matching and free shipping on orders of $35 or more, reduced from the normal $50. This promotion lasts for what Walmart called Cyber Week, which starts on November 30th, and ending on December 6th. 

Meanwhile, Amazon is going to start its Black Friday a day earlier this year, and plans to have new deals pop up every 10 minutes.

This also extends to shipping: just yesterday eBay announced that it would be offering free delivery on its eBay Now same day delivery service for an entire month. 

We are becoming overrun with deals and offers, so much so that its almost impossible to keep track of who has what deal and for how long. And you can thank mobile devices for that.

As Bloomberg pointed out on Monday, now that we have our own portable shopping devices, we don't have to wait until Monday to get deals. And that is causing an all out war between e-commerce and retailer giants to get our attention.

And just how much money is there to be made from mobile commerce?

M-Commerce spending reached $4.7 billion in the second quarter of this year, growing 24% year to year, according to comScore. 

In the first half of 2013, spending on mobile was $10.6 billion, or 10% of total digital commerce during that time.

Projecting for the full year, comScore expects m-commerce to top $25 billion for 2013.

Between smartphones and tablets, it may surprise you that smartphones are actually driving more transactions. They accounted for 6% of digital commerce, compared to 3.5% for tablets. Still, tablet owners spend considerably more: their average spending is 20% higher than smartphone users. 

A record breaking season?

Still, don't count out the appeal of those specific days that are known for their deals. Adobe is already predicting that this will be the biggest holiday shopping season ever. 

Online sales on Thanksgiving will be $1.1 billion, Adobe said, an increase of 21% from last year. And Black Friday will see $1.6 billion, up 17% from last year. 

Last year's Black Friday broke $1 billion for the first time ever, while shopping on Thanksgiving also broke online sales, hitting over $600 million.

But the real money has, and will probably always, come on Cyber Monday. Shopping on the first Monday following Thanksgiving will increase by 15% year year, for to a total of a whopping $2.27 billion spent. Remember that last year's Cyber Monday was the biggest shopping day of all time. 

I think that there will always be something special about having specific days where you know you will get the best deals. If retailers try to compensate too much, there could definitely be a backlash against deal fatigue, something I'm already feeling myself.

(Image source: https://shop-ability.com)