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Online shopping is expected to hit new highs this holiday season — and a lot of it will happen on smartphones. But savvy shoppers may be better off doing their shopping the good ol’ fashioned way.
This year, $1 out of every $5 dollars spent from November through December will go toward an online purchase, according to a forecast from Adobe Digital Insights.
Over a third (36%) of e-commerce sales this year are expected to be made on a smartphone, according to Adobe, a 20% increase from a year ago, and smartphones are expected to account for 47% of overall sales growth during the holiday season in 2019. In particular, millennials are expected to use their phones for shopping — 69% of millennials said they plan to use their phone to buy holiday gifts rather than desktop computers or laptops, according to a survey from The Harris Poll.
Adobe predicts that Christmas Day will be the first time ever that consumers will make more purchases from their smartphones than from a desktop computer.
Read more: Shopping on Black Friday? 5 ways to score the best deals
But there are some serious downsides to shopping with a smartphone. Here are some reasons why consumers should avoid smartphone spending — or be smarter about how they do it.
Mobile sites don’t always include all the information you need
There’s a big difference in online shopping on an actual computer versus with a mobile device, researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel found. The study examined what information consumers get from retailers’ websites.
They found that many companies provide less information on the mobile-friendly versions of their websites. “Sites adjusted for mobile viewing reduce the information offered on the results page and require more digging around in the site for information,” Lior Fink, a Ben-Gurion University professor who co-authored the study, said. “Sites adjusted for PC viewing give more information right up front.”
Therefore, consumers may want to double check a product on a laptop or desktop before pressing purchase on an item through a mobile device.
Shopping with a mobile app can leave you vulnerable to fraudsters
Criminals have caught onto the mobile shopping trend and have created fake mobile apps designed to steal information from consumers or install malware onto their devices, according to LifeLock NLOK, +0.36%. Before downloading an app that appears to be a retailer’s, carefully review the description to make sure it is the official app and not one designed to mimic that company.
Lifelock advises only downloading apps from “reputable stores, such as Galaxy Apps, the App Store, Amazon AMZN, +1.30% App Store and Google Play. Some providers, such as Google Play, scan apps for malware prior to publishing them on their store.”
Another risk comes with connecting to public WiFi network when shopping with your smartphone — something people may do when they’re out and about shopping. Fraudsters can create dummy WiFi networks or hack into public ones and use the connection to gain access to your device. If they do this, and you then use your phone or tablet to shop, they can take your personal information including your name, address and credit-card number to make fraudulent purchases or steal your identity.
Also see: How to win every economic and political argument with your family this Thanksgiving
People who use mobile wallets spend more money
A growing number of Americans have begun storing their credit-card information in mobile wallets or payment apps such as Apple Pay and Wallet AAPL, -0.78% , Samsung Pay 005930, +0.77% or Google Pay GOOGL, +0.56% . But researchers have found that when people use mobile wallets they start spending more money.
A study of Chinese consumers released in 2018 found that the total amount of money consumers spent went up by more than 2% after they adopted mobile payments.
