Retailers Hate That You Buy Big Things on Your Laptop
People often prefer bigger screens and keyboards for pricier purchases—but merchants have more levers to pull on mobile
4 min
Shoppers want to make significant purchases on their laptops. Retailers really want them to do more on their phones.
Lately, the retailers are winning more often.
Mobile e-commerce has for years been hailed as the future of shopping . Online shops as well as airlines and hotels have upgraded and pushed apps or mobile-optimised websites as a way to get our attention—and access to our wallets. By using push notifications , mobile-only deals and other levers, vendors can tempt customers to make quick, unplanned purchases.
It’s finally working, as this past holiday season was the first time mobile-revenue share surpassed desktop, reaching 61% on Christmas Day, according to data from Adobe .
But that increase masks what shoppers say they want, particularly when it comes to large purchases. They often call these “big-screen purchases”—shopping done on computers. You might not like a retailer’s app or mobile website. You might prefer a web browser with extensions that track coupons or price changes. You might just want a second window open to check a calendar or a map.
And the laptop’s extra friction makes shoppers more careful: Many people say they have moved too fast on a phone, accidentally buying the wrong plane tickets.
As more companies amp up their mobile offerings to lure more shoppers away from their laptops, it’s good to be aware of the differences, especially if it could mean saving money.
Highflying purchase
Amanda Natividad, a 38-year-old vice president at a Los Angeles marketing startup, says she always opens her laptop before making a purchase.
She uses browser extensions to search for coupons and maximise credit-card benefits. It’s also easier for her to fill in her credit-card information with her computer in front of her and her password manager on hand, she says. And she can more easily double-check her calendar when booking flights.
“It’s just an old ingrained behaviour,” Natividad says. “It’s a flight, better use my computer for this.”
Many people tend to be on their phones while they’re distracted or in transit, but they use their computers when they’re at home or in the office, making it easier to focus, says Tim Calkins, a professor of marketing at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.
“If you’re thinking about taking a vacation, early on you might be browsing through lots of different options and thinking generally about all the wonderful places you can go,” he says. “It is a very different mindset when you’re ready to spend thousands of dollars on booking the actual trip.”
Chasing convenience
Sarah Baicker, a 39-year-old content-marketing and communications manager in Washington Crossing, Pa., feels comfortable using her phone for almost every task or purchase, especially now that she’s chasing around a 2-year-old daughter. She booked a flight on the JetBlue app on New Year’s Day when she realised some credits were expiring.
“Sometimes it’s more annoying to make a purchase on a phone—that doesn’t bother me,” Baicker says. “I’m not bothered by a little bit of extra work for the sake of the convenience of not having to track down a secondary piece of technology.”
Companies have worked to make mobile purchases even easier. Services such as Apple Pay, Google Pay or Shop Pay automatically add in our billing and shipping information to our orders. If we’re shopping in an app, we’re usually already logged in and don’t have to dig up our credentials. (These are also available on laptop browsers, but they function smoothly within many mobile apps and shopping websites.)
Mobile shopping also scratches an itch for consumers who are scrolling their social-media feeds, with endless posts and stories shilling products to buy. When it comes to impulse shopping, 48% of people are likely to do so on a phone, compared with 19% on a laptop and 10% on a desktop, according to Slickdeals, a website that tracks sales and coupons.
The convenience factor seems to be working for many companies. In 2023, people shopped for flights on the United Airlines app 123 million times, a 23% increase from the year before, says a United spokeswoman. On Airbnb , 54% of total nights booked last quarter were done on the app, up from 49% booked during the same period a year ago, the company reported in its most recent quarterly earnings.
HotelTonight, which is owned by Airbnb, has long been a mobile-first company, with more than 90% of bookings happening on the app, and with some deals only available on mobile, says Ron Sandel, general manager of HotelTonight.
“At the end of the day, we’re a last-minute booking app. If you’re booking on the go—like so many of our users often are—you’re not pulling your laptop out to do that,” Sandel says.
A wider view
Though mobile shopping is becoming more popular, it still can’t make up for a bigger screen.
Logan Medeiros, a 23-year-old lifestyle and beauty content creator in Montreal, always pulls up her laptop to make a large purchase—such as her latest trip to Vancouver, Canada. The bigger screen makes it easier to open multiple tabs to compare hotels and flights.
That extra display real estate also prompts her to use her laptop for other purchases, such as buying clothes.
And more-mindful shoppers use their laptops to prevent impulse buys.
Alexander Lewis, a 31-year-old ghostwriter for tech companies and executives in Austin, Texas, set rules for himself to follow before buying anything online, such as mostly purchasing on a laptop and waiting at least a day before making the final call.
He says when he gets back to his cart, he often wonders whether he actually wants to read a book or own an article of clothing he saved.
“Having the internet always around us is an easy way to mindlessly spend our attention and also spend our money,” Lewis says.
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From tax residency and superannuation to offshore investments and property, the financial implications of coming home can be more complex than leaving.
3 min
Every year, thousands of Australians make the decision to pack up life overseas and come home.
After years, sometimes decades, building careers, accumulating assets, and growing families in places like Dubai, London, Singapore, or Hong Kong, the pull back is understandable.
What most don’t appreciate until it’s too late is that the return journey is often far more financially complex than the departure.
Leaving Australia is, financially speaking, a relatively clean event.
You depart, you potentially become a non-resident for tax purposes, and a new set of rules applies.
Coming back, however, means reconciling everything you’ve accumulated offshore with an Australian tax system that hasn’t been standing still waiting for you.
The Tax Residency Trap
The first and most costly mistake is misunderstanding when Australian tax residency resumes.
Many returning expats assume residency only kicks in once they’ve formally re-established themselves, signed a lease, updated their address, started a job. The ATO doesn’t see it that way.
Under Australian tax law, residency can recommence the moment you land with the intention of remaining. That means any taxable events, investment income, asset disposals, foreign account distributions that occur after that point are potentially assessable in Australia, even if they’re sitting in offshore accounts you haven’t touched.
Superannuation: The Clock Doesn’t Stop
One of the most underappreciated issues for returning expats is what’s been happening inside their superannuation fund while they’ve been away.
Contributions may have paused, but fees, insurance premiums, and investment volatility haven’t. Some returning clients are genuinely shocked by how much ground their super has lost to fees during periods of lower balances or inappropriate investment settings.
The more strategic issue is what to do on the way back. If you hold foreign pension arrangements, a UK SIPP or QROPS, a 401(k), and international savings schemes, the question of whether and how to repatriate those funds requires careful planning before you return.
Once you’re a tax resident again, distributions from certain foreign structures can be assessable as ordinary income, and the window to manage that exposure closes.
Offshore Investments Don’t Disappear
Returning to Australia doesn’t sever your obligations in the countries where you’ve been living.
Foreign-held shares, managed funds, or investment accounts will be picked up by Australian tax reporting requirements from the moment residency resumes.
The Foreign Investment Fund rules, transferor trust provisions, and the reporting obligations under Australia’s tax information exchange agreements mean these holdings need to be declared and, in some cases, restructured.
Leaving investments sitting offshore in structures that made sense as a non-resident but create compliance headaches as a resident is one of the most common and expensive mistakes we see.
The restructuring cost, if it’s even possible post-return, typically dwarfs what it would have cost to plan properly in advance.
Property: Both Sides of the Balance Sheet
There are two distinct property problems for returning expats.
The first is what they’ve held while away, an Australian property rented out during the absence.
Depending on how long the property was the main residence and how it was treated during the rental period, the CGT calculation on eventual sale can be complex.
The six-year absence rule provides some relief, but it’s not automatic and has conditions that are frequently misunderstood.
The second is re-entry into the Australian property market.
After years of asset accumulation offshore, many returnees assume they’re well-positioned to buy.
The challenge is that their financial picture, including foreign income history, offshore assets and currency, doesn’t translate neatly into Australian mortgage serviceability.
Lenders read foreign income conservatively, and what looks like a strong balance sheet can create unexpected borrowing capacity issues.
The Fix: Plan Before You Land
The single most effective thing an expat can do is start planning the return 12 to 18 months before departure.
That timeline allows for managed asset disposals under non-resident rules where advantageous, superannuation catch-up strategies, foreign structure rationalisation, and property decisions that aren’t being made under time pressure.
The irony is that most Australians sought financial advice before they left on how to exit cleanly.
Far fewer seek the same rigour on the way back in. Given the complexity involved, that’s an expensive oversight.
Coming home should be a financial clean slate. With the right planning, it can be. Without it, you’ll spend the first few years back unwinding decisions that didn’t have to be problems at all.
Brett Evans is the founder of Atlas Wealth and the author of The Expat’s Handbook.
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