The online supermarket brand Ocado has long been ahead of many of its competitors in terms of its online marketing – being an online-only business they’ve had to be really! But they’ve just released figures showing that their mobile app is having a seriously positive effect on sales.

As part of the half-year 2013 results, Ocado announced that a third (30%) of its sales are now made through its app, an amazing figure. Not only that but their mobile website is also a popular option with a steadily increasing amount of shoppers using it for checkouts.

The Ocado app is a great example of a straight forward, user friendly shopping app. Rather than simply lifing a mobile enabled website and packaging it into an app, Ocado have taken the time to work the app out properly and it shows both from a user prospective and from a results prospective.

Other retailers have seen similar trends over the last few months; Littlewoods, Argos and Debenhams are all enjoying increased sales through their ecommerce offerings and are particularly focused on mcommerce.

And as more and more smartphone users get to grips with the idea of mobile apps, the level of trust s increasing too. Research from Deloitte shows that half of all shoppers having bought products from a mobile app and 57% have checked for stock in-store using a mobile.

The news should be a rocket for ecommerce brands that have yet to develop a solid mobile presence, although getting it right from the offset is key. Talking to the V3 website, Scott Dacko, associate professor of strategic marketing and management at Warwick Business School, explained that mobile customers can be fickle and if an app isn’t up to their standards first time, they’re not likely to go back – “There are millions of apps for Apple and Android and most people uninstall anything if it doesn’t work on the first go and they will look at the ratings other users give the app, so it needs to work well the first time it’s used.”