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15 Key E-Commerce Benchmarks You Need To Know Now | September 13, 2017 (0 comments)
Merrick, NY—So your e-commerce stats are up. That’s great news and it means you’re doing something right. But e-commerce trends change with the wind—more so than any other retail category—so it’s important to know if you’re meeting, beating, or still behind the industry average on e-commerce.
Next month’s 25 In 5 jewelry e-commerce conference in Miami Beach, FL, will help you fine-tune your strategies to ensure you’re leading the pack, not an also-ran. In the meantime, it’s helpful to know what the e-commerce leaders are doing and where the bar stands in 2017.
Alan Coleman of Dublin, Ireland-based Wolfgang Digital has been doing an annual global e-commerce benchmarking study for a few years. Martin Meany of Wolfgang Digital told The Centurion that though the study covers global e-commerce, U.S. sites were included in the study and the overall percentage statistics are relevant to the American market.
Here are 15 key takeaways from The E-Commerce Benchmark KPI Study 2017:
1. Google is still the number-one window to the Web—between organic search (38%) and cost-per-click (24%), it generates 62% of all traffic and 63% of all revenue to retailers’ websites. By percentage, however, its influence is waning a bit: in the 2016 study, it accounted for 69% of traffic and 62% of revenue, respectively. But it is still the 800-lb gorilla, because the actual numbers it delivers are growing. The percentage decline just means that it’s not the only game in town; other routes to your website are growing too, and now account for more of the total pie.
2. As consumer paths to your website become more diverse, “dark traffic” is on the rise. Never to be confused with the “dark web,” dark traffic refers to people that get to your site through a shared [mobile] source like WhatsApp. Those visitors show up as direct traffic in Google Analytics, not as search traffic.
3. Consumers’ path to purchase has gotten longer. 45% of consumers will purchase in one click, but that number drops to 20% with two clicks and declines all the way to about 2% at 11 clicks before suddenly regaining a bit of ground; back up to about 6% to 7% at 12 clicks.
4. Mobile is gaining share of eyeballs, but desktop still retains share of wallet. 52% of website sessions were mobile in 2017, compared to 42% in 2016. But desktop visits account for 61% of all e-commerce revenue, with desktop visitors being 134% more likely to convert to buyers. But mobile is super-important: findings in the 2016 study (reinforced in 2017) show mobile devices are highly influential in the purchase process. Consumers typically will decide to buy from looking at the mobile device; they’ll just do the actual transaction from the desktop. Revenue from mobile did increase year on year: in 2016, 21% of all e-commerce revenue came from a mobile phone; in 2017, 28% did. Interestingly, however, tablet share [as opposed to smartphone] declined: in 2017 it accounted for only 12% share of both eyeballs and revenue; in 2017 that figure was 17% for both.
5. The average conversion metric for all e-commerce is 1.6%. For the total retail category, the average was slightly below at 1.39%, but for pure play e-tail, it was slightly higher at 1.81%.
6. Food websites perform the best at converting lookers to buyers, with a conversion rate of 21.23%! Don’t shop when you’re hungry, even online.
7. “Sticky” websites have better conversion rates. Not a big surprise: the longer a person spends on your site and the more pages they visit, the more likely they are to purchase.
8. People trust Google. The higher you come up on Google, the more people are likely to buy from you.
9. Tablet shoppers are more likely to buy luxury. Although tablets accounted for the smallest part of the e-commerce pie, those that do shop via tablet are likely to spend more. The more an item costs, however, the more clicks it takes to get there, no matter what the device.
10. Loyal shoppers are your best-converting shoppers. Again, not a big surprise. They also typically show up as direct traffic (meaning they log onto your site in the first place, rather than access it via Google or other search mechanism.)
11. Speed it up! The faster your web pages load, the more likely you are to convert lookers to buyers. The average site speed was 6 seconds, much slower than the recommended 2 seconds. But reducing your average load time by even 1.6 seconds can boost revenues by 10% or more.
12. Mobile makes money. Sites that get mobile and tablet traffic generate more revenue in general.
13. Email delivers more digital conversion revenue than Facebook. While still far behind Google’s 62% (combined organic and CPC) and direct-to-your-site figures (18%), email leads the pack over Facebook at 4% of revenue delivered vs. 1%.
14. Bada-Bing! Bing as a search engine may seem insignificant compared to Google, but it does have its loyal fans, and by percentage delivers good conversion metrics. It can be a quick win for retailers.
15. Pinterest is a powerful visual search engine. It’s a place where people research what they’ll eventually purchase.
Read the full The E-Commerce Benchmark KPI Study 2017 here; download a podcast about it here; and compare it to 2016 figures here.