What Firefox on iPhone Means For Shoppers

Few things have generated as hot a debate in our home as our very different choices in technology. While my husband swears by PCs and Chrome, I’d take my Mac and Firefox any day. Phone shoppers are more and more prominent.

Last week, Mozilla finally announced the first public preview of the Mozilla browser for iPhones and iPads. While they have been providing a desktop version of Firefox for Macs since May 2003, it’s taken them almost 8 long years to create an iPhone version, despite Apple’s ever-growing cult following.

Worldwide, Chrome is still king with a market presence of over 50%. Internet Explorer and Firefox have been leveling out at around 20% and 18%, respectively. This move could possibly be the what Mozilla needs to jump start its market presence.

As of September 2014, mobile shopping finally exceeded online shopping and has been seeing steady growth over the last year.



With the average adult spending 2.8 hours per day on vertical screens and 2.4 on horizontal screens, eCommerce sites need to provide a responsive design, creating a seamless move from one platform to the other.

Among our own customers, desktop site search still prevails. A quarter of all searches are being done from iPhones and and additional 16.2% being done from other smartphones; phone shoppers.

When asked why shoppers still prefer shopping from their computers, the top reasons included that they can’t get a clear or large enough image of the product and that the product information cannot be easily viewed. A large percentage of those who favored mobile shopping confessed to searching for products while still in the store, using online coupons and price comparisons to ensure they are getting the best deal.

Regardless of whether shoppers check out from their mobile devices or their desktop, a large part of the shopping experience is being done on mobile devices.

InstantSearch+ offers eCommerce sites top of the line search with AutoComplete providing relevant results from the first letter. Our responsive design means your customers get the same look and feel on all devices and with all browsers without having to do any additional work.