Screen Pages has released e-commerce benchmark data regarding visitor sources and behaviour, conversions for retail e-commerce websites, for the period Feb-Mar 2013.
The businesses indexed are limited to niche brands, generally selling online, via catalogues and stores, with online sales range up to £10m per annum and average order values average £65. The websites all use the e-commerce platform Magento.
The data includes statistics regarding traffic sources and mobile usage, website engagement, conversion rates and onsite search usage.
| Traffic sources | Average | High | Low |
| Brand searches | 15.3% | 26.1% | 7.1% |
| Generic search | 7.9% | 14.4% | 2.7% |
| Direct (URL entry) | 18.5% | 25.6% | 9.6% |
| Email marketing | 14.3% | 38.9% | 1.0% |
| Paid search | 19.2% | 40.2% | 0.7% |
| Direct + brand related searches ("know us") | 33.8% | 51.0% | 20.9% |
| Engagement | Average | High | Low |
| Overall bounce rate | 36.0% | 47.3% | 24.1% |
| Home page bounce rate | 22.0% | 34.0% | 14.6% |
| % landings on home page | 39.3% | 62.1% | 10.9% |
| Conversion rates | Average | High | Low |
| Brand searches | 5.0% | 15.5% | 0.6% |
| Generic search | 1.4% | 3.9% | 0.4% |
| Paid search | 3.1% | 7.7% | 0.6% |
| Email marketing | 3.7% | 8.6% | 0.6% |
| Overall conversion rate | 3.3% | 8.3% | 0.7% |
| Mobile usage | Average | High | Low |
| % traffic from mobile/tablets | 32.0% | 46.5% | 19.0% |
| % traffic from iPads | 16.3% | 22.5% | 12.3% |
| % traffic from iPhones | 10.2% | 18.4% | 3.5% |
| iPad conversion ratio | 2.8% | 6.24% | 0.8% |
| iPhone conversion ratio | 0.9% | 1.88% | 0.2% |
| Onsite search | Average | High | Low |
| % visit using search | 5.7% | 18.1% | 0.9% |
| Conversion rate of search | 4.6% | 17.2% | 0.7% |
Visitors mostly come from brand related searches and direct URL entry or are brought to the website by email marketing or paid search. The amount of traffic from generic searches (a measure of SEO effectiveness) is small. This highlights the importance of establishing a strong brand and the value of both email marketing and paid search as marketing methods.
On average, 1 in 3 visitors leaves websites without entering - on home pages (where 40% of visitors arrive), this is only 1 in 5, highlighting the need to make all landing pages engaging and effective.
Email marketing and brand-related searches perform the best in terms of sales conversions, with generic search converting half as well as paid search. Paid search emerges as an effective vehicle, converting at 3%.
Mobile adoption (including tablets) is nearly at one third, but remains dominated by Apple. On sites not optimised for small screens, iPads are the most popular device and perform well as a shopping tool, whereas iPhones are problematic - converting at only one third of the sites as a whole.
Used by less than 6% of visitors, onsite search is not an important tool on these websites, although it converts well when used.
