Fashion Is (Finally) The Top Online Shopping Category

If more of your closet than ever is sourced from online shopping sprees, you're certainly not alone: For the first time ever, clothing is the top-selling e-comm category, according to a recently released report from analytics firm ComScore. People apparently added more clothing to their carts than items from any other category in 2015. Wearable purchases have always comprised a large chunk of online spending, but for three out of four quarters last year, clothing and accessories sales eclipsed all other categories. That includes even the spending segment that has historically killed it: computer hardware. Fashion's current e-comm reign also reveals something interesting (but not entirely shocking) about how people shop today. In the report, ComScore looked at what's being shelled out for on both desktop and mobile (a.k.a. m-comm), and phone-based shopping is cited as a main reason that clothing and accessories are selling so well digitally these days. “M-commerce is where most of the digital commerce growth is happening in retail overall, and people are more likely to purchase less expensive, less complex products on mobile (e.g. apparel) than they are to buy computer products," Adam Lella, a senior analyst at ComScore, told Quartz. So that additional limb (or second brain, really) has a lot to do with clothing sales eclipsing tech ones: More people are using their phones more frequently than actual computers these days, Lella said. As he noted, we're more likely to make low-impact purchases (impulse buys, even) on our phones than we are to shell out for expensive hardware that way. E-comm giant Amazon has already been seeing clothing sales trump computer sales (and the mobile-friendly site is even poised to replace Macy's as the top clothing retailer next year). So, if you needed further evidence that hitting "buy" in lieu of being rung up in a brick-and-mortar store is the future of shopping, well, there it is...