Picture courtesy Topshop Unique

We’re buying more and more fashion on our smartphones these days but it seems laptop and desktop computers, as well as the tablets that we use to browse while lounging on our sofas, are still our favourite devices for actually spending.

A new report, from e-tailer personalisation platform Nosto, based on data from 700 vendors, shows that m-commerce accounts for 51% of all online spend across categories but for fashion, we’re still more likely to buy via a traditional computer or tablet.

And we spend more per order on other devices. UK shoppers’ average fashion order value (AOV) via smartphone was £89 in the first half of the year compared to £116 on desktop/laptop and £107 on tablets.

While some commentators seem surprised/frustrated at this, I’m not particularly shocked.

Personally, I buy on my laptop, my tablet and my phone, depending on the circumstances. But if I’m in the comfort of my living room, buying via a smartphone is the last thing I’d do. And given that most of my fashion purchases are done from the sofa, then I’m a confirmed laptop/tablet shopper. 

My phone is more of a device for research – shooting photos, making price comparisons while in-store and so on. That makes it a crucial omnichannel tool and with Nosto saying mobile bounce rate is the highest of any device and time on site is also the lowest, it seems many people feel the same way.

However much investment e-tailers put into their smartphone apps and however tech-tastic smartphones get, it makes sense that consumers will use a large screen over a small one when they’re able to when shopping for items as personal as things we’re going to wear.

And that seems to be the attitude across Europe. Consumers in the Nordics and France spend more via smartphones (£101 and £96 AOV respectively) while in Germany it’s £88 and in Spain £81. But with those figures not too far different from the UK’s, it seems the laptop/tablet bias is fairly universal.

That said, fashion m-commerce via smartphones is growing fast and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. But whether it will ever become the primary channel for fashion spending (especially higher value transactions) is still open to question.

Nosto said mobile accounted for 29% of all UK fashion web traffic in the first half, a rise from 22% compared to H1 2015.