Retailers with a mobile presence generate only 2.8% of their overall online, web-store traffic from their mobile phone browsers and only 2% of their online sales via the mobile devices, themselves.  Given these small numbers, perhaps it’s no surprise that of the 84 retailers asked, almost two-thirds of them said that they either had no mobile strategy or were in the early stages of coming up with one.  Still, they’re excited about the future potential.

These findings come from an annual state of online retailing study commissioned by the National Retail Federation’s digital arm Shop.org and conducted by Forrester Research, which surveyed a total of more than 100 retailers this spring.  Before pooh-poohing the distribution channel, it bears recalling that online sales, themselves, took a good decade or so to catch on.  One new retail wrinkle that may be more hype than anything else: social-media marketing.  “Only 7% of retailers cited a social networking presence as one of their top three most effective tools for gaining customers last year, compared with 90% of them citing marketing through search engines such as Google.com.”  The Wall Street Journal Jun. 29, 2010