Over the course of 2012 we have seen a dramatic shift in how online e-commerce business is done as mobile passed social media and has begun driving more e-commerce traffic by a large amount than we were seeing this time last year. Mobile applications, mobile web sites and the mobile industry are certainly maturing and are a much more prominent part of commerce than they were just a short time ago. According to the Monetate’s Q1 2013 report, we see tablets and smart phones are now driving more than 21 percent of e-commerce traffic during Q1 2013, while last year at this time, mobile was driving just 2 percent of e-commerce traffic.

This isn’t just due to the massive growth of the mobile industry and the wide use of mobile applications and mobile web sites, the Monetate report details how social networks are pushing much less traffic to e-commerce sites than they used too. Social media sites are currently driving less than 2 percent of e-commerce related traffic.

Just as with the the traditional Internet, search continues to push most of the most e-commerce traffic. This is most likely because shoppers are well versed in how to search for products/services online at this point and this skill has transferred over to the mobile arena. Monetate’s report states that search accounts for nearly one-third (31.43 percent) of e-commerce related traffic in Q1 2013. Other interesting findings from the same study are that tablets are driving 10.58 percent  of  e-commerce traffic, while smart phones account for  10.44 percent of e-commerce traffic. Meanwhile they also note that email is responsible for just 2.82 percent of  e-commerce traffic.

Mobile is not the coming thing anymore and any business that isn’t solidly positioned in the mobile marketplace is severely handicapping themselves at this point. Mobile applications and mobile web sites are essential to do business in the marketplace and business that have developed these items in a way to account for consumer usage patterns will have a significant advantage over their competitors.