Criteo has released its State of Mobile Commerce Report for Q4 2015. The report looks at mobile behaviour, based on activity in Criteo’s network, which includes 1.7bn transactions per year on desktop and mobile sites across over 3,000 online retail and travel businesses globally.

In Q4 2015, mobile transaction share saw 15 per cent growth from 2014, accounting for 30 per cent of all eCommerce transactions. Across mobile devices, tablets drove higher value sales than smartphones, but iOS devices saw higher order values than the average.

Smartphones accounted for 60 per cent of all mobile transactions in the US, driven by the combination of better transaction ability, ubiquity, big screens and fast wireless broadband. In fact, smartphones account for a majority of mobile sales globally, with the trend most pronounced in Japan and S. Korea.

Almost 40 per cent of transactions occurred across multiple devices or channels in the quarter, with 37 per cent of desktop buyers browsing the same retailer’s site on at least one other device before purchasing. 50 per cent of all eCommerce transactions across the globe were cross-device.

Cross-device shoppers who completed their purchase on a tablet were the most likely to have used multiple devices in the path-to-purchase, with 43 per cent of tablet shoppers using multiple devices in their shopping journey. This cross-device behaviour shows how important it is, Criteo says, that brands understand user profiles across multiple devices, browsers, and apps, for which Criteo has its own determinstic solution called Universal Match covering 500m exact-matched IDs.

Retailers and brands with intuitive apps that highlight relevant products to consumers and remove barriers to purchase are seeing stronger sales and higher values, the report notes. Of those retailers that have prioritized the mobile experience, mobile apps accounted for 54 per cent of all mobile transactions in the retail industry, and 58 per cent of mobile transactions in the travel industry.

Shoppers using mobile apps browsed 286 per cent more products than mobile web shoppers, contributing to an add-to-basket rate 90 per cent higher than mobile browsers. Additionally, the overall conversion rate on in apps was 120 per cent higher than mobile browsers.