Mobile shoppers still prefer the website to brand apps

Nielsen finds that app developing dollars aren't paying off as much as many brands would hope

Retail companies and brands have been scrambling to create mobile apps that make it easier to find and purchase items from smartphones, but a study released Monday is showing that all those development dollars may not be as well-spent as once thought.

Despite all that we have heard about consumers trusting specific mobile apps for their transactions, Nielsen has found that most of the U.S. shoppers are using the Web more than tailored apps.

The research, which looked at 5,000 Android and iOS smartphones in the U.S., over this past holiday season has shown the clear advantage is in Amazon's corner.

Also, Nielsen explained that when you combine the traffic from both the Web and the mobile apps, the top five retailers’ sites — Amazon, Best Buy, eBay, Target and Walmart — reached 60% of smartphone users in the month of December. The mobile apps for the top five retailers only hit an all-time high of 28% of mobile users in the month of December, while the Websites accessed through mobile phones touched 51% in the same month.

Amazon, on the other hand, is in a class unto itself, a full 10% above the other top retailers in traffic to the mobile website, and experienced the largest spike in mobile Web traffic during the Black Friday week. Also worth noting was that eBay was the only top retailers that didn't experience a spike in traffic throughout the holiday season, presumably because shoppers approach the site as an auctioning location that wouldn't reflect holiday specials.

There were also notable gender shifts in mobile habits by consumers. Men are more likely to use apps than women, who opt for mobile Web sites. Also, more men than women visited Best Buy on mobile, while Target and Walmart attracted more women on their mobile devices. EBay and Amazon attracted men and women almost equally.

As retailer continue to build their sites, products and apps to serve the mobile world, it is crucial to understand where people are going to learn and purchase items and why they are picking these methods over others. 

If retailers continue to shovel money into specific mobile apps, they may need to better market and cross-reference these options to their mobile users so that they can capture the audience and control the user experience better. 

It also is important to assure shopping security measures are taken into the mobile environment since we reported this past holiday season that the growing dependance on our smartphones will play a bigger role than ever on our shopping behavior.

A survey by the National Cyber Security Alliance and McAfee released in November is giving insight to our shopping practices from mobile devices.

Now, half of Americans have researched a potential purchase via their smartphone -- which has resulted in 27% of people shopping and 18% going through an buying physical items over their phone.

This shift to considering your phone as a small computer with all the same features and capabilities is a great sign for retailers but a risky bet for shoppers because most people install firewalls and security software for their computer but 72% of mobile shoppers admitted that they have no security software on their phones.

McAfee researchers estimate that the number of new mobile malware in 2010 increased by 46% in that year and is expected to affect 5% of devices in the net 1-2 years.

That may not seem like a staggering number, but with 23% of users including banking applications to their phone and more than a one in four shopping on their phones, this could lead to serious risks for identity theft.