There has been a stark rise in traffic towards Irish businesses’ online services, with average spend rising in kind.
The main growth seems to be in mobile, with it eating into desktop share to now make up 37pc of all browsing – the traffic figures in general are up 28pc.
The research, conducted by Wolfgang Digital, shows that mobile traffic is up 64pc on this time last year, with tablet (up 6pc) and desktop (up 9pc) also rising.
Average consumer spend online is also up 62pc.
Online shopping, a speedy rise
The rise in internet speeds is, according to the Alan Coleman, CEO of Wolfgang Digital, the biggest driver of this shift to online shopping.
“The double impact of 4G broadband infrastructure improving and 4G smartphone penetration increasing, means less time is spent watching swirly icons and more time is spent consuming content,” he said.
“Improved mobile internet speeds means more web pages can be viewed in the same amount of time.”
Back in April a report by the IE Domain Registry found that 91pc of Irish SMEs can’t process any sales online whatsoever.
Likewise, in terms of running their business through the internet, 68pc of those surveyed showed they couldn’t handle payments online and 62pc couldn’t take sales orders online.
What about the apps?
The Wolfgang research notes that last year 5pc of the Irish economy was online, rising to a probably 7pc now, with that growth surely set to continue. So businesses yet to engage in e-commerce would be wise to get involved.
“Another important point to note is that we are measuring website traffic but not app traffic. This means we are actually underreporting on the size of mobile and tablet activity,” concluded Coleman.
This infographic should give a clearer picture of the findings.
Main image via Shutterstock
