Study: Top Retailers Will Lose $5.4 Billion In Mobile Revenue This Holiday Season

The holiday shopping season is the most important time of the year for many retailers, but a new study by Moovweb reveals that some of the biggest names in U.S. retail, including Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. WMT, J C Penney Company Inc JCP and Best Buy Co Inc BBY, are missing out on major revenue due to poor mobile platform performance.

Mobile Is The Trend Of The Season

This year, an estimated 34 percent of online holiday shopping will be done on mobile devices.

Moovweb studied the mobile platforms of 16 top U.S. retailers and generated some surprising conclusions. The company estimates that sub-optimal performance, slow checkout times and glitchy apps will result in an overall mobile card abandonment rate of 14.9 percent this holiday season. More importantly for investors, that number represents an estimated $5.47 billion in lost sales.

“More customers are using their smartphones that ever before, yet almost 75 percent of shopping carts were abandoned last Black Friday alone, likely due to subpar experience on mobile web,” Moovweb CEO Ajay Kapur explained.

The study found the average checkout time for a first-time mobile shopper this holiday season is nearly 2.5 minutes.

The study suggests that retailers investing heavily in improving their mobile platforms have the chance to capitalize on a multi-billion-dollar opportunity.

Since Black Friday

• Best Buy shares are up 3.8 percent.
• J.C. Penney shares are up 4.5 percent.
• Wal-Mart shares are down 1.3 percent.

At Last Check

• Best Buy shares are down 0.99 percent at $48.83.
• J.C. Penney shares are down 2.75 percent at $10.27.
• Wal-Mart shares are down 0.64 percent at $69.89.