by Claudia Bruemmer

With Black Friday a couple months away, the Google Mobile Ads Blog is sharing a few insights on what marketers can expect for the holiday shopping season. After reading these stats, all retailers and web merchants should start preparing for the holidays right now, ensuring their mobile sites are user friendly, creating great mobile content and coupon offers. Merchants can expect increased mobile searches, higher mobile ad response, more coupon users and more early holiday shoppers using smartphones and tablets.

Mobile Shoppers Rule
Google made some predictions for mobile usage during the holiday season based on its historical growth rate data. Here are Google’s projections:

• 15 percent of total “Black Friday” searches will be from smartphones and tablets.
• 44 percent of total searches for last minute gifts and store locator terms be made from smartphones and tablets.
• 65 percent of smartphone and tablet users said they located a local store with their device and then made a purchase.
• Over one-third of high-end mobile users will start holiday shopping before Thanksgiving.
• Over the past two holiday seasons, Google sees a “double peak” in search volume for retail brands around Black Friday and the week before Christmas by last-minute shoppers on mobile devices. These shoppers locate and shop at local stores because they missed free shipping.

Another good piece of intelligence from research by eMarketer indicates that millions of consumers will be redeeming mobile coupons as 9.5 percent of U.S. mobile phone users access and redeem mobile coupons this year. Coupons are more popular than they have been in years, and you can attract business with coupon offers in mobile ads.

Preparing for Mobile Shoppers
There is no doubt mobile has transformed people’s lives in every way, and especially in the way they shop. Despite that, you may be surprised to learn 79 percent of large online advertisers do not have a mobile optimized website (Google/Kelsey). This not only makes it hard for mobile and tablet users to shop for what they need quickly and easily; it makes it hard for merchants to sell their goods. Here’s why retailers, web merchants and all kinds of marketers need to optimize for mobile.

• 7 percent of U.S. web traffic comes from mobile devices.
• 85 percent of mobile devices will be web enabled by next year.
• Mobile search has grown four fold in the past year.
• 1 in 3 mobile searches have local intent.

It’s time for marketers to use mobile to their advantage, and it’s not too late to optimize for the coming holiday shopping season.

Retailers and web merchants can also consider mobile advertising and the use of coupon offers. People are willing to engage in action with local businesses, and especially during the last week before Christmas when Google predicts a second mobile shopping frenzy.

Don’t forget mobile optimization for your videos and app downloads, which are also very popular with mobile users. With so many shoppers aiming for pre-Thanksgiving shopping, there couldn’t be a better time than the present for implementing plans to optimize for mobile.