Mobile Commerce

Focusing on the omnichannel customer, mobile apps vs. mobile sites, and the real return on investment of social media were just a few of the many topics discussed at eTail West, which took place in Palm Desert, Calif. this week. Here's a look at a few key takeaways — and fun perspectives — via tweets sent during the conference:

A post-holiday e-commerce report released Friday by technology company Monetate found that on Christmas Day 2012, 16 percent of all e-commerce traffic came from smartphones and 15.6 percent came from tablets, a marked upswing from a year earlier when just 6.4 percent came from smartphones and 8 percent from tablets.

Bloomingdale's, Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue optimized their Valentine's Day shopping guides for smartphone and tablet applications to encourage consumers to make emotional purchases on-the-go. Retailers can certainly benefit from providing seasonal gift guides on mobile apps so that consumers can browse the same products on their desktop, smartphone and tablet. Though in-app purchases won't make or break sales during a gifting holiday such as Valentine's Day, it's vital for the shopping experience to be optimized for mobile to keep up with the shift from e-commerce to mobile commerce, experts say.

Since launching mobile-optimized websites for Fingerhut in May and Gettington in July of last year, Bluestem Brands has seen its mobile traffic increase from 10 percent of overall traffic to nearly 20 percent of overall traffic. Both retailers' sites also saw over 20 percent improvements in conversion rate, pages per visit, average length of visit and revenue per visit.

Facebook did not get much attention last October when it officially launched "mobile app install ads," in part because the company unveiled about a dozen new ad products in 2012 and, from the users' point of view, many of them kinda looked the same. But several of Facebook's big advertising clients who have used the ads in the fourth quarter indicated that the ads can be used to develop e-commerce on Facebook, turning the social network into a mobile shopping and sales device.

Google is poised to win the "mobile wallet war," according to a survey of attendees at the National Retail Federation's annual conference in New York. The survey was conducted by ACI Worldwide, an international provider of payment systems. Over half (52 percent) of respondents said they believe Google would come out on top when it comes to mobile payment systems. An additional 25 percent believe PayPal will come out on top, while nearly one in five respondents (19 percent) believes a new market entrant could gain traction in this emerging segment.

Craft marketplace Etsy has acquired mobile photo app maker Mixel as part of its efforts to beef up native mobile app development. Mixel launched in November 2011 as a hyped collage creation app for the iPad, and later pivoted to be more of a simple photo manipulation tool for the iPhone. The four-person Mixel team, which had talked to a number of potential buyers after its pivot, gets to stay in New York, making the easy move to Etsy's Brooklyn office from the Union Square area.

Two of Square's biggest competitors are joining forces: PayPal and point-of-sale (POS) company NCR just announced a major deal that could tip the mobile payments market in PayPal's favor. The arrangement will see PayPal's payments offering implemented within NCR's mobile apps and services for restaurants and other retailers. At first, PayPal will merely be a checkout option within NCR's Mobile Pay app, which lets restaurant-goers place orders, call their waiter, and even checkout from their phones. But eventually, PayPal will offer that mobile dining experience within its own mobile apps whenever you check-in to a participating NCR-customer restaurant.

Maybe 2012 was the year of mobile after all. U.S. retail m-commerce sales shot up 81 percent to nearly $25 billion last year, propelled by rapid adoption of tablets and smartphones as shopping devices, according to new estimates from eMarketer. Mobile devices accounted for 11 percent of total U.S. retail e-commerce sales in 2012, eMarketer estimates, and further growth is expected to push mobile sales to a 15 percent share of all U.S. retail e-commerce sales this year.

Mobile shoppers are expecting more from retailers according to a new study by Latitude, Next-Gen Retail: Mobile & Beyond. Smartphones and tablets aren't just making shopping more convenient and real time, they're fundamentally changing how people think about shopping. Mobile shopping makes people feel more relaxed, productive and informed, as well as more open-minded and receptive to discovering new things, says the report.