What is Mobile Commerce? Types and Examples (2026)

Mobile commerce covers any type of online transaction done via smartphone or tablet. Statista estimates total sales in the US exceeded $577 billion in 2025. 

Mobile commerce is a convenient way for customers to interact with retailers. 

“People don’t shop in the way that they used to,” says Rosie Johnston, founder of By Rosie Jane, in a Shopify Masters interview. “People shop where they are.”

This guide shares top stats, trends, and best practices for mobile commerce.

What is mobile commerce?

Mobile commerce is the buying and selling of goods and services on phones or tablets. Also known as mobile ecommerce or m-commerce, it covers marketplace apps, social commerce platforms like Shop, and mobile wallet payments.

Key mobile commerce statistics

Here are some mobile commerce statistics to illustrate how important m-commerce is:

• There were nearly 7.5 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide as of 2025, according to Ericsson.
• Smartphones accounted for 74% of retail traffic and 71% of orders on ecommerce stores globally as of the second quarter of 2026, according to Statista.
• Ecommerce conversion rates in September 2026 were higher on mobile (2.86%) than desktop (2.23%) on average, according to Dynamic Yield.
• Global in-app revenue grew 10.6% year over year, reaching $167 billion in 2025, according to Sensor Tower.

Benefits of mobile commerce

Convenience, faster transactions, and payment method variety can contribute to better customer experiences on mobile. Here are the benefits that an m-commerce strategy brings to an online store:

Convenience

A 2025 survey found the majority of US smartphone users aged 18 to 34 spent 40 hours a week or more on their device, according to Statista. It’s convenient to be able to immediately pull up a mobile commerce app or website via your phone to make a purchase as soon as the mood strikes.

More payment options

Baymard’s 2026 survey of US online shoppers found 9% had abandoned a cart within the previous three months because there weren’t enough payment options. 

Digital wallets are the largest ecommerce payment method, at 56% of global and 40% of US online transaction value, according to Worldpay’s 2026 Global Payments Report. They let customers use mobile payment options when they check out using their smartphone, such as:

• Shop Pay
• Apple Pay
• Samsung Pay
• Google Pay
• Amazon Pay
• PayPal Express

Speed

Mobile wallets store a shopper’s payment details so returning customers can quickly check out. This speed matters: conversions drop about 3.5% for every 100 millisecond delay in page load times, Shopify data shows.

Juiced Bikes says Shop Pay is the store’s most popular payment method. 

“It’s a faster user experience, and it’s all contained within the checkout flow so customers aren’t being redirected anywhere else,” says former Director of Ecommerce Marisa Delatorre. “It’s even better if customers have an account already as the two-factor authentication gets you checked out in no time.”

Mobile-first indexing

Google officially switched to mobile-first indexing in late 2023. They no longer look at the desktop version first when determining search rankings. Well-optimized mobile sites are taken into consideration with a set of metrics called Core Web Vitals. 

A 2025 Web Almanac analysis found just 62% of sites achieve a “good” Largest Contentful Paint score (i.e., page load speed of under 2.5 seconds) on mobile devices versus 74% on desktop. Largest Contentful Paint is one of Google’s three Core Web Vitals. This leaves plenty of opportunity to rank in mobile search results with an optimized ecommerce site. 

Location tracking 

Location-based services use the geographical position of a mobile device to provide services relevant to the user’s current location. Proximity marketing campaigns, for example, can send mobile users promotions based on their location in your store. 

Mobile commerce also lets you integrate with mapping and search services to help users find your store. This includes Google Maps, where brands can reach local mobile shoppers with Google Maps ads.

What are the challenges of mobile commerce?

Mobile commerce isn’t without its challenges, including:

• Continuous optimization. Smartphone brands regularly launch new devices with varying dimensions and specifications. Take the Apple iPhone Duo. Its foldable screen has different proportions to their usual phone screen sizes. Your site needs to be responsive and work well on these devices.
• Higher cart abandonment. Cart abandonment rates tend to be higher on mobile devices than desktop computers, according to Dynamic Yield. 
• Privacy concerns. Attentive’s 2026 personalization trends report found 46% want to browse without being tracked, yet 69% of privacy-conscious shoppers still want some type of personalization. 
• Mobile payment security concerns. Shop Pay has PCI-compliant storage of customer shipping and billing details. Shopify also offers fraud analysis to flag suspicious mobile transactions. 

How to increase mobile commerce sales

Here’s how to increase mobile sales for your online business:

1. Ensure your website is mobile optimized

A mobile-friendly website caters to smartphone and tablet shoppers while also helping with mobile SEO. 

“We used to design our website from the standpoint of looking at it from a computer screen, but that’s not how people shop anymore,” Morgan Cros, founder of Original Duckhead, tells Shopify Masters. “[Mobile optimization] made a big difference in our revenue and our conversion rate.”

A mobile-friendly website has:

• Fast mobile load speeds 
• Large, finger-friendly buttons
• Responsive design that automatically adjust based on screen size
• Image compression and resizing (Shopify’s CDN does this automatically)

Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights to track page load time and minimize it as much as possible. Shopify merchants can also use their Shopify online store speed report, located in their admin dashboard. 

The Shopify Search & Discovery app can help mobile users browse your product catalog. Use it to suggest related and complementary products on product pages. It caters to the 73% of shoppers who told Attentive they’re more likely to purchase when given product suggestions that feel relevant to their needs and preferences.

2. Shorten your checkout process

Implement one-click or express checkout options like Shop Pay to make the mobile checkout process as quick and painless as possible. 

With Shopify, you can offer payment options like Shop Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal Express, Venmo, and Google Pay, where customers have their information saved and can check out almost instantly.

Fashion brand Everlane turned to Shop Pay to speed up the checkout process. Mobile users can use securely stored payment credentials to checkout from their device. It helped Everlane reach record high checkout conversion rates. Some 15% of their audience opted for Shop Pay in the first 30 days alone. 

“Our customers are using Shop Pay, and it resonates well with them,” says Everlane’s former product lead, Anna M. Peterson. “They recognize the Shop Pay button on our site from other places they’ve shopped before.”

3. Create your own mobile app or PWA

Progressive web apps (PWAs) are mini apps that still run on a browser, however, they’re much faster than a regular web browser. Mobile shopping apps are a type of software that customers can download on their devices to shop your products without visiting your website.

Here are the main differences between a responsive website, mobile app, and PWA.

Shopify brands can also make their products discoverable inside the Shop app. More than 250 million verified shoppers worldwide already use the mobile app, and 48% of all orders are from first-time brand shoppers. Listings are available to eligible Shopify brands.

4. Build an omnichannel customer experience

Not everyone who visits your ecommerce website on a mobile device will complete their purchase through it. PYMNTS’s 2025 Global Digital Shopping Index found almost half of shoppers used their smartphone as part of their latest retail purchase, while 60% window shop on their device multiple times per week. 

Cater to cross-device shoppers with an omnichannel retail strategy. You could: 

• Offer coupons on your mobile app that can be used online and in-store
• Have accounts accessible on both desktop and mobile browsers/apps
• Display inventory at local stores and offer buy online, pickup in-store options 

Shopify’s unified commerce platform builds a customer profile each time someone shares their data with your brand. Any supplementary data, whether collected through your mobile app, online store, or retail locations, feed back to this unified profile in real time. 

Jenni Kayne Home relies on unified profiles to personalize the shopping experience. 

“You don’t buy a living room overnight,” says Sam Mella, senior director of brand experience. “But if we had insights about these customers based on our previous interactions online and in-person, then we could follow up and thoughtfully guide them through the purchasing journey.”

5. Offer a mobile chatbot

More than 81% of live chats take place on mobile, according to Comm10’s 2026 data. Shopify Inbox lets you scale support with an AI-powered customer service agent. 

Shopify Inbox can pull data from your Shopify admin to answer FAQs like:

• What’s your return policy?
• Will my order arrive in time? 
• Do you accept this payment method?

Shopify Inbox can also act as an AI shopping assistant. Customers can ask for product recommendations, and the AI agent will scan your Shopify product catalog and recommend relevant items. 

M-commerce examples

Types of mobile commerce include:

• Marketplace apps like Shop
• Social commerce platforms like TikTok Shop 
• Mobile banking apps
• Mobile payments and transactions
• Mobile ticketing
• In-app purchasing

Here’s how three Shopify brands used mobile commerce to grow their business:

Serge Blanco

Serge Blanco ran its ecommerce business on a legacy system that couldn’t keep up with mobile optimization. 

“We were seeing significant conversion loss, particularly on mobile, where the checkout funnel lacked fluidity,” says Digital Acquisition Manager Matthieu De Vaulx.

The apparel brand migrated to Shopify to fix those issues. They now had one unified commerce platform to operate their mobile-friendly store alongside more than 50 retail locations worldwide. Matthieu says the new checkout experience “drove conversion rates up directly, especially on mobile.”

Ronaldo Jewelry

Ronaldo Jewelry’s migration tells a similar story. Previously on BigCommerce, the jewelry brand worked with Shopify partner agency Arctic Grey to redesign their mobile site. This included a custom theme with:

• Condensed product pages
• Sticky Add to Cart buttons above the fold 
• Sticky search bar and dynamic footers to give quick access to collections 

“With Shopify as our canvas, we polished Ronaldo Jewelry’s site in under five months—delivering mobile-first optimizations, AI-driven search, and frictionless checkout,” says Brooke Sanderson, director of enterprise accounts at Arctic Grey. “Launch brought immediate wins—faster speeds, bolder SEO, and a 100% conversion rate surge that truly reflects their brand’s brilliance.”

V’s Barbershop

V’s Barbershop operates a network of 65 barbershops across the US. They migrated to Shopify to simplify the mobile booking system. Now, customers can book appointments through their mobile-first Shopify storefront, a move that increased conversion rates by 40% and reduced site speed by 30%. 

What are the mobile commerce trends to consider for 2026?

Mobile commerce trends to watch in 2026 include social commerce, AI-powered mobile shopping assistants, and augmented reality (AR) try-on. Here’s how to apply them to your business:

Social commerce drives mobile sales

Statista estimated social networks made up 13.8% of online sales worldwide in 2025. Apps like TikTok Shop, Facebook, and Instagram each have native social commerce features that let brands sell products directly to users without redirecting them to their mobile website.

TikTok Shop is particularly popular. EMarketer predicted that over half of social buyers in the US would make a purchase through TikTok Shop in 2026. 

Shopify brands can sell on TikTok, Meta, Pinterest, and YouTube with sales channel integrations. They sync your product catalog with each social commerce platform, so each is working with real-time and accurate information when social users browse.

AI shopping assistants help with product discovery 

A 2026 Nielsen report found 42% of shoppers had used AI tools like ChatGPT and Google Gemini to shop in the past month. Mobile versions of those AI tools are popular: ChatGPT became the fastest app to reach 1 billion downloads across iOS and Google Play in July 2025, according to Sensor Tower.

Shopify has a range of features to take advantage of this growing mobile commerce trend: 

• Agentic storefronts. AI search crawlers parse information from Shopify Catalog to help the AI models match products with customer conversations.
• Knowledge Base app. Address the FAQs your customers are asking in AI search so crawlers have accurate, up-to-date information to pull from. 

Augmented reality (AR) try-on 

Augmented reality can overlay 3D models onto a live stream of a customer’s camera to show what products look like in-person. Clutch’s reported in March 2026 that 60% of consumers have already used this type of technology. 

Use Shopify’s 3D scanner on your mobile phone to create AR models for your products. You can upload them to the product media section of your Shopify admin. 

Gunner Kennels used augmented reality to solve one problem: customers didn’t know how to order the right sized crate for their dog. They built 3D experiences for online shoppers to show life-sized versions of each crate so customers could sit their own pet next to it to check sizes before ordering. The tool helped Gunner Kennels reduce return rates by 5% and improve order conversion rates by 40%.