Mobile shopping really hit its stride at the end of the year to many retailers’ surprise. For the first half of the year though, mobile web and apps were notoriously hard to use and discouraged customers. Marketing personalization company Monetate found that m-commerce “skyrocketed” on Thanksgiving and Black Friday this year, with 44% of Thanksgiving Day’s online traffic coming from mobile and 42.5% of Black Friday’s online traffic coming from mobile.

Still, desktop users converted at an 82% higher rate than mobile users, according to data from omnichannel marketing firm Sailthru's Trust in Technology survey of holiday data. They also found that most email was coming to consumers via their smartphones, a bit of a disconcerting disconnect that could indicate that retailers are not quite ready for mobile the way their customers are.​

Consumers are clearly ready to shop and transact on mobile, and retailers must get ready for that if they aren’t already.