It’s do or die, for retailers yet to embrace a mobile version of their website.

The adoption of m-retail is growing so fast that one in three of all UK online sales are now made on a mobile device.

Tablets account for the majority of sales with smart phones taking more of a back seat. However, mobile devices are now delivering almost half of all website traffic, with the clothing websites reaching tipping point by receiving over half of their visits from m-devices.

Moss Bros recently saw the relevance of m-retail during the Christmas period: “It was definitely a mobile and click and collect Christmas and sale period for Moss Bros. We saw our first suit sold online on Christmas Day at 10am on a tablet, probably a present opened that day! Mobile now is as important as the full website version and we are now optimising the customer journey on both tablet and other mobile devices. Click and collect also played an important part as customers look for more flexibility and convenience in delivery offers and order closer to big occasions like Christmas,” said Neil Sansom, Ecommerce Director.

The new figures are according to the latest results from the IMRG Capgemini Quarterly Benchmarking (Q4 2013/4) that show in the period November 2013 to January 2014, m-retail accounted for 32% of online sales – 6% were via smartphones, while tablet devices were used for 26% of e-retail sales during the quarter.

The Quarterly Benchmarking tracks over 40 key performance indicators across 7 categories, leading to unique insights into the performance of the UK e-retail sector.

Tina Spooner, Chief Information Officer at IMRG, said: “With an estimated 12 million tablet devices sold in the UK alone last year, and 70% of UK consumers now owning a smartphone, it is not surprising that the penetration of mobile commerce has reached a third of the UK online retail market. In fact, the latest Quarterly Benchmarking results reveal the penetration of m-retail has surged 2,000% in just three years”.

“Consumer confidence in mobile continues to increase and improvements in mobile optimisation and the user experience are certainly factors in this. We expect this trend to continue throughout 2014, with visits set to surpass desktop usage over the coming months,” she adds.

Chris Webster, Head of Retail, Capgemini: “As these results clearly demonstrate, retailers have been hugely successful in encouraging consumers to adopt mobile devices as a shopping platform. This is thanks, in no small part, to the significant investments that have been made to m-commerce sites which are now more intuitive and user friendly than ever before. This has helped ensure customers not only use the sites to browse but make purchases from them too, thereby reducing visitor bounce rates”.

He continues, “However, there are some challenges that remain. As our shopping behaviours shift from a traditional e-retail model to mobile, retailers will need to overcome the consistently high basket abandonment rates, as well as the significant number of items that are returned. So while enormous strides have been made, opportunities to materially improve performance remain.”