Mobile phones and tablet computers are now used for nearly 6% of all retail sales as Brits embrace shopping from the sofa, the train and under the duvet.
While total online sales rose 18% year-on-year in December to £11.1bn, according to the latest figures from e-tail industry body IMRG and advisory firm Capgemini, sales via mobile devices doubled to £3bn.
'Sales via mobiles will continue to rise in 2014, this is now mainstream,' said Chris Webster, head of retail at Capgemini. He said that the adoption of hand-held technology, as well as the development of click-and-collect' services, which enable shoppers to order online and then pick up their purchases at a convenient store, had accelerated the switch from the high street to online. 'What we usually see when a market matures is that the rate of growth slows, but it is accelerating,' Webster said. IMRG is predicting that this year total online sales will rise by 17% to £107bn after rising 16% to £91bn last year.
Shoppers' switching to the internet is already having a huge impact on traditional retailers who are having to invest millions of pounds in creating logistics networks and IT systems to cope with delivery of online orders while sales in stores fall back. Those retailers without a strong online presence, such as supermarket Morrisons, had a very poor Christmas.
But the switch to mobile shopping is causing other potentially longlasting changes. Retailers said easy-to-use and now cheap tablet computers such as Tesco's Hudl were opening up online shopping to a much broader range of consumers, including the less well-off and older.
'Tablet computers are lowering the barriers to entry. People not comfortable with technology are comfortable with tablets which are more tactile,' said Andrew McClelland from IMRG.
Sean McKee, head of e-commerce at footwear chain Schuh, added: 'Some 75-year-old shoppers are doing their first transactions online via iPads.'
With shoppers carrying the technology around in their pocket, retailers also have the opportunity to communicate with customers much more frequently, changing buying patterns. Retailers say they now see spikes in online activity late in the evening, as people shop while watching television, or early in the morning as purchases are made before work. Sunday evening is also overtaking Monday as the busiest online shopping day of the week.
About 80% of mobile sales come from tablet computers, but sales via smartphones are growing faster as retailers adapt their websites to make it easier to shop from a phone and the technology improves. Sales from smartphones nearly tripled between 2012 and 2013.
The increase in sales via mobiles is also helping drive use of click-and-collect services according to Webster, who said shoppers who preferred to buy on the move were less likely to have the kind of lifestyle which enabled them to wait at home for collections.
About a quarter of online orders are now collected rather than sent to homes and Webster said growth would continue.
Mark Lewis, online director at department store John Lewis, said the biggest transformation in retail in 2014 would be the blurring together of all the different shopping channels, from online and mobile to stores, home delivery and collection. 'Customers expect us to offer them a completely seamless service across all touch points and our job is to wire it all together,' he said.
The rise of click-and-collect could be behind a huge growth of home and garden goods sold online. Sales rose by a quarter between December 2012 and December 2013, a pace of growth only matched by lingerie. The next fastest growing category was accessories, such as belts and scarves, followed by electrical goods.
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