A new report by Forrester Research for trade group Shop.org shows that smartphones generated only a small portion of online sales last year — about $5 billion of a $226 billion e-commerce market, according to an article on dispatch.com.
While retailers will continue to invest in mobile strategies, the bulk of their technology spending in 2013 will be on improving online checkout, product descriptions and the overall user experience, according to the report.
"Retailers have been burned getting very, very hyped up over mobile," Forrester Research e-commerce analyst Sucharita Mulpuru said in a presentation at the National Retail Federation's annual convention last week in New York, the article reported. "Even though consumers have these phones, the number of transactions on those phones is still small."
The Forrester survey's retailers reported average online sales growth last year of 28 percent. But Mulpuru warned that the growth won't last forever, noting that the number of new online shoppers has begun to taper off and predicting that e-commerce will max out at 20 percent of a retailer's sales.
"Be prepared for the party to end. It has to end at some point," she said.
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