Integrated mobile and digital communications business, Mobile Interactive Group (MIG), has unveiled its Christmas Sock Report. The research evaluated the UK’s top 57 fashion retailers against their m-commerce capabilities, in particular testing them on the question: how easy is it to find and purchase the most popular Christmas present - a pair of socks?

The report concluded that only 16 retailers had a mobile application with nine of these being capable of processing a transaction. In addition, only four retailers had an optimised transactional mobile site. In total, 23 per cent of all retailers in the fashion sector allowed users to find and purchase a pair of socks via mobile. Clicks to find a pair of socks ranged between two and five and clicks to the checkout (or registration page) ranged between five and eight.

Ben Cusack, group marketing director at MIG, says: “With the continued growth of smartphones and the mobile internet, m-commerce has rapidly grown in to a huge opportunity for the retail sector. In the UK, Marks and Spencer has played a pivotal role in championing investment in m-commerce by allowing their customers to search, browse and purchase their full product range on mobile, at a time and place that’s convenient for them.”

“The Sock Report clearly demonstrates that the fashion subset of the retail sector is lagging behind somewhat and since we know that consumers’ online behaviour extends right in to the mobile channel, clearly there are huge gains to be made with a transactional m-commerce strategy in 2011,” he adds.

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