Tablets are having an increasing impact on non-store sales as their penetration continues to grow at a dramatic rate and they deliver a much greater conversion rate than mobile phones.

Nick Marley, head of web and mobile e-commerce at Waitrose, has announced that iPads were “twice as important” as iPhones to Waitrose, with the devices already accounting for 15% of transactions despite Waitrose not yet having a tablet-optimised site.

Such is the growing importantance of tablets that Marley says the company is looking to develop a site for tablets that can then be utilised on the desktop. “The return on investment over the next two years will be with tablets,” says Marley, although he suggests that over the longer term it will switch to mobiles as they become part of a broader multi-channel retail proposition.  

He suggests that such is the impact of tablets and mobiles that people are “now living life through screens”. And this behaviour is only going to increase, according to Steve Brockway, research director at eDigitalResearch, who says that over the next three years 90% of people in the UK will have a smart-phone with internet access and that the current 20% of consumers with tablets will likely increase by 50% over Christmas – replicating last year’s trend.