This year's Cyber Monday was a huge reckoning for retailers

AP/Michael Dwyer

Customers are gravitating toward mobile shopping - and it's time to listen.

• Record-setting Cyber Monday sales propelled mobile to its first $2 billion day, according to Adobe Analytics.
• Mobile is now the "de facto" platform for shoppers.
• Retailers who haven't yet embraced mobile are about to be left behind.

Mobile is here, and it demands to be taken seriously.

The platform has grown steadily in importance throughout the years, but the speed of shopper's taking to their phones this year to shop Thanksgiving weekend sales is unprecedented.

Cyber Monday was officially mobile's first $2 billion day ever, raking in a substantial portion of the record-setting $6.59 billion spent online.

Smartphones were especially important, accounting for 37.6% of retail visits and about 21% of revenue for the holiday. Conversation rates also increased 10% on phones when compared to last year.

"Smartphones have become the de facto device for mobile shopping, while tablets continue to be more used as entertainment and gaming devices," Taylor Schreiner, head of Adobe Digital Insights, said in an emailed statement. "Consumers take smartphones everywhere including work and have a broad range of screen size options that make mobile shopping convenient and easy."

The ease of mobile shopping has also greatly increased, with shopping experiences refined through apps and integration with mobile-wallet services like Apple Pay.

This also led to a mobile shopping increase on both Thanksgiving and Black Friday.

A dramatic increase of shoppers using mobile devices for the most important shopping days of the year represents a reckoning for retailers. For those that don't have an optimized, streamlined, easy-to-use mobile app with mobile wallet integration, they're going to be left behind and ignored.

This isn't just for the large retailers that can afford to invest heavily in new technology. It also goes for the smaller retailers too. In fact, Adobe Analytics found that with smaller retailers, measured by those with revenue under $10 million annually, shoppers had a 30 percent higher chance of clicking the buy button on smartphones than with large retailers.

This represents a huge opportunity for smaller retailers to grab market share from their larger peers. The customer is clearly saying what they want - it's time to listen.

EXCLUSIVE FREE REPORT:
The Top 4 Apps and Platforms Takes That Go Against The Grain Report by the BI Intelligence Research Team.
Get the Report Now »