Mobile the preferred choice for Chinese New Year sales conversions

If you think consumers are becoming numb to the festivities and so you should be cutting back on your spend, don't tighten your purse strings just yet.According to a study by Criteo, Chinese New Year shopping peaked on 22 January for the fashion industry, garnering 217% in sales. On the same day, desktop saw a 164% sales increase in Singapore, followed by mobile app (134%) and mobile web (105%).  Local fashion marketers told us that they in fact, started pushing out Chinese New Year campaigns between December until three weeks before Chinese New Year.Meanwhile, e-commerce brands Marketing spoke to said mobile offered them the highest sales conversions. This comes to no surprise since Minister for Communications & Information Yaacob Ibrahim announced in January this year, that Singapore has a smartphone penetration rate of 150%, one of the highest globally.ShopBack's country head Vincent Wong said that while its mobile app sees the most sales conversions, most of its customers are also comfortable making purchases across all platforms, including desktop. "Customers buy on the platform that's most convenient or accessible for them at the point of purchase," he said.For Qoo10, 60% of its transactions stem from its mobile app, with an almost equal split between iOS and Android platforms. While the company is predominantly present on desktop and mobile, its spokesperson said Qoo10 is "definitely seeing" a greater traction in customers using their mobile for purchases in recent months.Likewise, Shopee's Zhou said that over 90% of its consumers shop on mobile, adding that customers today prefer to shop on the go and expect their online shopping experience to be seamless and secure. "At Shopee, we built the user interface with the end-user in mind, taking a mobile-first approach for faster and more intuitive shopping experiences," Zhou said.Meanwhile, Zalora's spokesperson said that more than half of its orders come from mobile devices, and that mobile shopping has leapfrogged desktop or traditional online shopping. [gallery link="file" ids="212433,212434,212435,212436,212437,212438"]