Shoppers searching more on mobiles for home and garden goods
New figures have revealed that online search volumes for home and garden products grew by 15% in the third quarter of 2015 compared with the same quarter a year earlier.
The data from the British Retail Consortium and Google also shows that search volumes on smartphones outpaced search volumes on tablets for the products, with growth of 48% compared with an increase on tablets of just 7%.
BRC chief executive, Helen Dickinson, said: “The most startling figure in this quarter’s monitor is that smartphone home and garden search volumes have outstripped all other devices, increasing an extraordinary 48% compared with last year. This is a testament to how hard retailers have worked to ensure their offers can be found and viewed effectively anywhere and on any kind of device.”
Martijn Bertisen, country sales director at Google, added: “In home, we see strong growth of 15%, but more importantly we see shoppers becoming increasingly mobile. This is indicative of new research behaviour, whereby shoppers research on their mobiles whilst out and about, often resulting in a store visit. In fact, in the UK we have seen that 43% of offline purchases journeys began online.”
Spurred on by two bank holidays, shoppers were found to be keen to improve their homes with top searches ranging from appliances to soft furnishings. Meanwhile, a disappointing summer led to UK consumers spending more time researching home furniture rather than barbecues this year.
