Mobile devices are playing an increasingly important role in terms of e-commerce website traffic, according to Monetate’s latest “Ecommerce Quarterly” (EQ) report for the third quarter of 2012.
Also, it seems that referral traffic from social media sites is declining, a trend that supports recent findings of the channel’s futility on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Add-to-cart and conversion rates
According to Monetate’s EQ3 1012 report, new visitors to e-commerce sites exhibited an add-to-cart rate of 6.28 percent in the third quarter, well below the 11.99 percent add-to-cart rate of returning visitors. This is a reminder to businesses that it costs more to get new customers than to keep current ones.
Also, new visitors exhibited a conversion rate of 2.09 percent, while returning visitors had a conversion rate of 4.07 percent. Visitors from Wyoming had the highest conversion rate (5.02 percent), while visitors from Hawaii had the lowest (2.64 percent).
Monetate recommends that businesses dynamically change the content on home pages and popular landing pages based on whether the visitor has been to the site before or not. Showing recently added products to returning visitors and showing best-selling products to new visitors is recommended.
Mobile
Monetate also found that smartphones accounted for 10.03 percent of total website traffic in the third quarter, up from 8.74 percent in the second quarter and up from 4.51 percent in the third quarter of 2011. Meanwhile, tablets accounted for 8.37 percent of total website traffic in the third quarter, up from 7.18 percent in the second quarter and up from 3.16 percent from the third quarter last year.
Non-mobile/traditional devices accounted for 81.60 percent of website traffic in the third quarter, down from 84.08 percent in the previous quarter and down from 92.33 percent in the third quarter of 2011.
According to Monetate, tablets had a conversion rate of 3.12 percent in the third quarter, while smartphones had a conversion rate of 1.01 percent. Traditional devices had a conversion rate of 3.28 percent. Android tablets beat the iPad and Kindle Fire with a conversion rate of 3.19 percent; Android phones beat the iPhone, Windows Phone and other smartphone with a conversion rate of 1.09 percent.
The message to online retailers is clear: make sure your site is mobile-optimized, and remember the difference of optimizing for smartphones and optimizing for tablets. “Exaggerating functions like the search bar helps visitors get on the pate to conversion faster,” Monetate notes in its report. “Look for website features and content that don’t render properly (like Flash on an iPad), and serve up static content instead.”
Social traffic
Recent numbers from IBM regarding Black Friday and Cyber Monday got plenty of attention: According to the company’s findings, shoppers referred to online retail sites from social networks generated 0.34 percent of all online sales on Black Friday, down more than 35 percent from 2011. Meanwhile, this same segment of social network-referred shoppers generated 0.41 percent of all online sales on Cyber Monday, a decline of more than 26 percent from 2011.
Monetate found that in the third quarter, inbound referral traffic from social channels accounted for 2.35 percent of the total, down from 2.74 percent in the second quarter. Meanwhile, inbound referral traffic from email was 4.19 percent in the third quarter, and traffic from search was 35.66 percent.
However, social traffic had a conversion rate of 0.73 percent in the third quarter, up from 0.61 percent in the second quarter and up from 0.37 percent from the third quarter of last year. Email traffic had a conversion rate of 4.12 percent, while search traffic had a conversion rate of 2.33 percent.
Average order value
The average order value (AOV) for U.S. shoppers in the third quarter was $90.54. International shoppers had an AOV of $125.33, but a conversion rate of just 0.96 percent (compared to 3.33 percent for U.S. shoppers) and a cart-abandonment rate of 86.15 percent (compared to 64.18 percent for U.S. shoppers). This highlights the importance of making sure websites are ready to translate key elements automatically based on visitors’ location, according to Monetate.
AOV was $97.82 for smartphone users in the third quarter, better than the AOV of $96.84 for tablet users and $91.76 for traditional device users.
Search traffic yielded an AOV of $90.60, better than the AOV of $82.34 for email traffic and the AOV of $63.47 for social traffic.
Mobile and social media have both received plenty of buzz lately, especially when it comes to converting visitors into customers. But Monetate’s numbers, along with those from IBM, seem to highlight the maturity still to be had for social channels, which achieve lackluster marks in some important metrics. Mobile took some time before truly starting to fulfill its tag as “the next big thing”
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