11/05/2015

RESEARCH

E-commerce benchmarks April-Jan 2015 [statistics]

Screen Pages has released e-commerce benchmark data regarding visitor sources and behaviour, conversions for retail e-commerce websites, for January-April 2015.

The businesses indexed are limited to niche brands, generally selling online, via catalogues and stores, whose online sales range up to £10m per annum and average order values average £65. The websites all use the e-commerce platform Magento. In aggregate, the report tracked the behaviour of over 5.3 million website visitors, placing 187,000+ orders and spending over £12 million.

Online retailers whose data was benchmarked include Atterley Road, Bella di Notte, Christopher Ward, Loake, Micro-Scooters, Van Dal, Rio Beauty, Force 4, the RSPB, Baldwins and This Works.

The data includes statistics regarding traffic sources and mobile usage, website engagement & conversion rates.

Overall KPIs

Average order value

£ per visit

Conversion rates

1st Quartile

£41

£1.04

1.19%

3rd Quartile

£105

£2.46

4.32%

Average

£65

£2.26

3.07%

Engagement / bounce

Bounce rate

Home page bounce

1st Quartile

35%

13.7%

3rd Quartile

47.4%

18.6&

Average

42.2%

19.2%

Traffic sources = organic search

% of visits

Bounce rate

Conversion rates

1st Quartile

34%

31%

1.24%

3rd Quartile

57%

50%

4.53%

Average

42%

40%

2.85%

Traffic sources = paid search

% of visits

Bounce rate

Conversion rates

1st Quartile

18%

34%

1.04%

3rd Quartile

34%

50%

3.51%

Average

24%

42%

2.68%

Traffic sources = email

% of visits

Bounce rate

Conversion rates

1st Quartile

12%

33%

1.54%

3rd Quartile

22%

47%

6.27%

Average

19%

39%

4.12%

Traffic sources = direct (none)

% of visits

Bounce rate

Conversion rates

1st Quartile

9%

42%

0.73%

3rd Quartile

15%

51%

4.34%

Average

12%

47%

2.97%

Traffic sources = referrals

% of visits

Bounce rate

Conversion rates

1st Quartile

5%

44%

0.52%

3rd Quartile

13%

56%

1.79%

Average

9%

49%

1.58%

Stand-out out figures

* Overall conversions average at 3.1%, ranging from less than 0.5% to well over 8.5%.
* The average £ per visit was £2.26.
* Email remains the best source of revenues: email (when executed well) produces extremely well, converting at 4.12% - some retailers do not use email effectively or do not track it properly. 5 of the sample had roughly 20%+ of their traffic from email, with 3 retailers enjoying conversion rates from email of over 8% (the highest being 10.3%).
* Paid search produces an average of 24% of all visits, converting at 2.7%. Two businesses enjoyed conversion rates on paid traffic of over 5%.
* Engagement (as measured by bounce rates) shows a large gap between home pages (which get a lot of marketing attention) and all other pages: 19% versus 42%).

Desktop usage

Viewed on desktop %

Bounce on desktop %

Conversion on desktop %

% sales on desktop %

1st Quartile

46.6%

38%

1.5%

62.6%

3rd Quartile

55.7%

47%

6.5%

71.2%

Average

50.5%

41%

4.1%

67.3%

Tablet usage

Viewed on tablet %

Bounce on tablet %

Conversion on tablet %

% sales on desktop %

1st Quartile

21.3%

45%

1.1%

20.2%

3rd Quartile

29.1%

54%

4.7%

28.2%

Average

23.7%

48%

2.9%

23.5%

Mobile usage

Viewed on mobile %

Bounce on mobile %

Conversion on mobile %

% sales on mobile %

1st Quartile

12.7%

45%

0.5%

4.8%

3rd Quartile

28.5%

63%

1.8%

9.3%

Average

22.5%

54%

1.1%

7.8%

Standout figures

Desktops still account for half of all traffic and two-thirds of sales, but mobiles have improved to be nearly one quarter of all visits (but only 7.8% of sales).

* 24.5% of visits are viewed on tablets, mostly iPads, generating 23.5% of sales.
* 22.5% of visits are viewed on mobiles, mostly iPhones, generating 7.8% of sales (up from 5% in Oct 2014).
* 50.5% of visits are viewed on desktops, generating 67.3% of sales - sales down 3 percentage points from Oct 2014.

The best conversion rate on a mobile was a meagre 2.7% - on a mobile-optimised "responsive" website (compared to 3.9% for its desktop site).

By Roger Willcocks