"While Christmas Day may be 6 weeks away, the Christmas shopping season is already in full swing, and everyone wants to know what’s in store for the millions of businesses, shops, and retailers looking forward to a very busy Christmas. We may not have a crystal ball, but we do have a good sense of what Australia’s Christmas shoppers are searching for online. So we started crunching the numbers to see what we could learn about how people are searching and shopping this year.
We discovered some interesting facts. First of all, 2011 is retail’s biggest year yet online--even bigger than the record-setting online shopping season driven by the strong Aussie dollar last year. Year over year, shopping-related searches are up 29%, making it more important than ever for businesses who want a piece of the action to get online.
However, it looks as though this year’s true Christmas miracle is mobile. While retail has posted impressive gains over last year’s season, the number of shopping queries coming from mobile devices increased 220% year on year. In fact, one quarter of all Christmas shopping-related Google searches this year now come from mobile devices.
This growth may be dramatic, but it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise. As we revealed in September, Australia has the second-highest smartphone penetration in the world. And by the end of this year, more than 50% of Australian adults will own a smartphone--just in time for Christmas. They’re using those smartphones to research gifts and contact local businesses. 1 in 5 sometimes even bypass the PC to make online purchases directly via their mobile phones.
So what does this mean for retail? To start with, it means that more people are looking for them, in more ways, and in more places: on the bus, from the train, even from the sofa while watching TV. At the same time, it means Australian businesses can’t afford to ignore mobile--without mobile-friendly websites, they’re invisible to the shoppers who’re trying to find them."
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