Over the past year, mobile has played a significant role in Fab’s growth. The updates affect the iPad, iPhone and Android apps and are meant to help users find products that they are looking for more quickly.

“For nearly a year now, we’ve been designing and building new features for Fab’s mobile users first, and then taking those features to the Web,” said Jason Goldberg, founder/CEO of Fab, New York in a blog post.

“Building mobile-first forces us to think about how Fab will be used by people on the go first, and people at their desks second,” he said. “We’re now in a rapid development cycle on Fab mobile, updating our app with new features and usability improvements every few weeks.”

Shop on mobile
Fab’s mobile app has been updated so that as users scroll down the screen, copy for products disappears so that images catch users’ attentions more.

Consumers can also narrow down products by product type or color with new search and filtering options.

Similarly, items can be sorted by price, popularity and availability.

Consumers can also bookmark their favorite items through a Fab profile.

Fab’s mobile strategy relies heavily on apps, making it critical for the company to nail the shopping experience to drive repeat usage and sales.

Fab regularly updates its app, which is a smart move to keep users on their toes.

Poised for growth
Depending on the time of day, Fab can see up to 50 percent of sales coming from mobile devices, showing how consumers are increasingly taking to their devices to browse and shop throughout the day.

Additionally, Fab claims that in the past month, there have been two days where mobile revenue was higher than PC revenue.

Fab’s mobile users also purchase 20 percent more items per order than Web users.

Not only are mobile users shopping more incrementally, they also have a higher lifetime value, per the company. Consumers with Fab’s iPad app are expected to have higher revenues than consumers with the iPhone app.

Both iPad and iPhone owners have higher lifetime value than the overall average Fab customer.

During the holidays, Fab reported that 56 percent of Christmas Day revenue in the United States came from mobile. Additionally, the company saw 40 percent of European revenue coming from mobile on Christmas Day (see story).

“Yes, Fab is a retailer — but our entire mobile experience is designed more for browsing and discovery than it is for buying,” Mr. Goldberg said.

“We want people to want to take their mobile out of their pocket hourly just to see what’s hot on Fab right now. We believe that if people enjoy browsing and discovering on Fab, plenty of sales will happen over time,” he said.

Final Take
Lauren Johnson is associate reporter on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York