It looks like it will be a very mobile holiday season for eBay this year. The e-commerce company is releasing new numbers today around its mobile growth. Specifically, eBay mobile-only dollars transacted increased more than 200 percent in Q3 2012 over the comparable 2011 period.
As revealed earlier this year, eBay mobile expects to transact $10 billion in volume in
2012, which is more than double the transactions in 2011. As eBay’s VP of Mobile, Steve Yankovich tells us, through the first nine months of 2012, more than 1.8 million new users made their first eBay purchases on mobile. In Q3, more than 800,000 new users made their first eBay purchases on mobile.
eBay is unveiling a number of mobile-only initiatives designed to engage shoppers on their smartphones. For example, the company is debuting an exclusive mobile gift guide and will also feature mobile-only special inventory and deals.
“The mobile business has gotten big enough so we are seeing similar behavior in terms of what people are buying on phones to what people are purchasing on the site,” Yankovich explains. In the future, he says, eBay will continue to focus on letting people buy “anytime, anywhere and anyplace,” via their mobile phones. The company is trying to think creatively about how to surface products on the site, as well as how to get that product into users’ hands.
eBay made a big bet on mobile last holiday shopping season, and it paid off. It should be interesting to see if the growth in mobile accelerates this year and what features consumers respond to.