With London Fashion Week kicking of tomorrow, thousands of fashionistas will be descending upon the capital to discover designers, get a glimpse into what’s next and have their photos snapped by street style photographers. But it seems that these sartorial aficionados are not on trend in one regard: their online consumption.
New research from Nosto, a personalisation platform for online retailers, challenges the assumption that mobile is their shopping platform of choice. It’s revealed that fashionistas are still doing most of their online shopping on their laptops, whilst smartphone purchases as a whole account for 51% of online purchases in Blighty. Having analysed data from 700 online fashion merchants and 241 million consumer visits in Europe in August 2016, the study revealed that UK consumers spent an average of £116 on fashion purchases on their desktops in the first six months of 2016, compared to £89 on their smartphones.
Despite this, the UK is ahead most other Europeans when it comes to mobile purchases of clothes, with the Nordics and French leading the way. And it seems Brits are becoming increasingly comfortable with buying clothes online. UK online fashion retailers saw a 28% jump in web traffic, which was the biggest increase across all devices in Europe in the first half of 2016. Overall, fashion retailers in Europe saw a 16% increase in online revenue from last year to 2016, with the Nordics leading the way with the average costumer spending £123 per purchase. British fashionistas came second, spending £111 and Spain’s average of £95 came third.
While some UK clothing retailers may take the results as a reason to focus on their desktop sites, they run severe risks by neglecting their mobile services. “With Google’s new mobile-friendly rules implemented last year, a retailer’s website must now be fully optimised for smartphone users,” said Matti Rönkkö, CEO of Nosto.
And with Europeans having spent £248bn on fashion annually, according to data from FashionUnited Business Intelligence, it’s safe to say investing in making clothes shopping on mobile easier is a smart move for UK retailers. “British consumers are becoming increasingly comfortable at looking for clothes through their smartphone, the next challenge to be tackled will be in converting these interested customers, into paying ones and increasing their average order value,” said Juha Valvanne, chief product officer and founder at Nosto.
In other words, the online market for haute couture is seemingly set to become hauter and hauter.
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