Mobile buying appears to be coming into its own this holiday season.

After several years of fits and starts, retailers and customers seem to be getting the knack for buying through smartphones and tablets. Both apps and retailers' direct websites are being used.

It wasn’t long ago that mobile shopping was onerous and even confusing, something retailers rushed to employ — but maybe rushed too much without fully understanding the technology. Mobile was often seen as an Internet add-on and not thought of as a powerful sales tool.

While now out of its nascent stages, mobile shopping, including app use, seems to be breaking through with consumers.

The crack in the iceberg

Just ask Steve Davis, CEO of trendy retailer Rue La La about this shift.

The online shopping site reported record-breaking business via mobile devices Thanksgiving Eve, with 68% of sales coming from this avenue.

From 5 to 8 p.m. EST, Rue La La saw its peak traffic on mobile devices. Men's fashion and women's accessories were the most popular items purchased via mobile and the highest value item ordered was a $10,000 diamond bracelet, which was ordered by tablet.

Davis credits the success to ease of use and speed.

“Rather than sacrificing time with friends and family, [people] accessed the best holiday deals and merchandise through their mobile devices,” he said. “Each year we see record breaking mobile traffic beginning with Thanksgiving weekend and this year was no exception.”

Of course, Rue La La is an online merchant, so its customers are Internet savvy. But Davis also said the amount of buying through mobile devices continues to grow. So maybe there is a crack in the iceberg.

“There is a fundamental shift in the way people are shopping and buying,” said Jim Davidson, director of research at Bronto Software. “Retailers have made mobile shopping easier, making the shopping and checkout processes more streamlined and friendly.”

"Mobile is here to stay" 

This ease is a shift from the past, when people were held back by retailers’ struggling to get the technology right. While consumers can now complete a transaction on a mobile device with relative ease, in the past the screen sizes were small and there was just a lack of comfort going this route.

Marketers now have access to technologies that are flexible, more robust and affordable, allowing them to customize the shopping experience in ways they never could before, Davidson said.

For instance, product pages now look and feel like a traditional website, the checkout process has been streamlined and made easier to use regardless of the mobile device the shopper is employing.

“I think there is now a balance happening between what shoppers want and expect when using a mobile device and what retailers can deliver,” Davidson said. “The balance continues to improve as consumers find new ways to shop and retailers find new ways to provide an improved experience for them. Technology is going to continue to improve as well, and that’s going to be very exiting and will continue to change the landscape of online commerce.”

There are a lot of emerging technologies “and who knows what will resonate with consumers,” Davidson said. “One thing’s for sure, mobile shopping is here to stay.”

Shoppers' mobile behavior 

The question now becomes in what manner and with what consistency. Best Buy became the poster child for what can go wrong when its site crashed over the Thanksgiving weekend, making desktop and mobile shopping impossible for that retailer’s customers. Ironically, the retailer is a big seller of tablets and smart phones. And there are likely to be other snafus by other retailers.

But the flip side is that problems are being attributed to a surge in the desire to buy online, with systems unable to handle significant demand. 

​"Online shopping has become a major force in global markets, and with the holiday shopping season upon us in the United States, we see mobile's share of that market accelerating," said Larry Moores, vice president for consumer mobile reporting and analytics at Opera Software.

A new report from Opera offers some insights into shopper behavior, breaking down mobile shopping trends by time of year, days of the week, and geography.

Unlike desktop traffic to e-commerce sites, which tends to peak on Mondays and remains stronger during weekdays than on weekends, mobile shopping traffic is highly concentrated on Sundays. One possible explanation is that many consumers use their mobile devices to browse products over the weekend, then revisit and purchase when they return to their desks on Monday, Moores said. The day with the lowest mobile shopping traffic is Friday.

Not surprisingly, the Christmas season is the most active time for mobile shopping. Between November and February, the United States sees a more than 15% increase over annual averages in shopping volume.

In the United States, Amazon leads the pack in mobile retail, with a 36.3% market share of traffic volume. Ebay is second, with 16% of market share, followed by Craigslist with 11.5%, Opera said.

Among the big-box retailers that offer mobile shopping, Wal-Mart sees the highest volume of traffic, followed by Target and Sears. 

Leading up to the holiday season, in October and November, the majority of global impressions on the Opera Mediaworks mobile ad platform came from ad campaigns for games, followed by computers and electronics. However, when looking at ad spend, companies selling mobile phone services came out on top, followed by home improvement stores. Apparel brands and jewelry were fairly low on the list.

Opera said the report is based on anonymous, aggregated data from the 270 million users of its software’s mobile browsers, as well as data from its Opera MediaWorks mobile platform, which serves 65 billion ad impressions a month on over 17,500 mobile sites and apps and reaches 800 million consumers globally.

Mobile for the holiday season

So, go mobile this holiday season, or at least try it out. With the growing evidence that the process works well—with an exception here and there—consumers will use it to make outright purchases, showroom or just laze from their couch instead of not shopping because it’s too cold to head to the mall. Merchandisers don’t seem to mind at all, except in the case of showrooming, and both consumer and retailers seem to benefit.