28/02/2018

RESEARCH

eCommerce benchmarks Oct - Dec 2017

Check out the latest quarterly eCommerce benchmark data regarding visitor sources and behaviour on conversions for retail eCommerce websites.

The businesses indexed are limited to multichannel retailers whose online sales range up to £15m per annum with average order values of £136. Their websites are all built on the eCommerce platform Magento. In aggregate, this latest report tracks the behaviour of 5.2 million website visitors across 19 businesses.

Online retailers whose data was benchmarked include Margaret Howell, Bella di Notte, Christopher Ward, Donald Russell, Loake Shoes, Micro-Scooters, Van Dal Shoes, Force 4, Moss Europe, the RSPB, Really Wild Clothing, Salter 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 rate

Bounce rate

Home page bounce

Organic search

% of visits

Bounce rate

Conversion rate

Paid search

% of visits

Bounce rate

Conversion rate

Email traffic

% of visits

Bounce rate

Conversion rate

Direct traffic

% of visits

Bounce rate

Conversion rate

Referral traffic

% of visits

Bounce rate

Conversion rate

1st Quartile

£43.57

£1.21

0.94%

33.55%

12.95%

1st Quartile

29%

30%

0.86%

1st Quartile

5%

32%

0.8%

1st Quartile

5%

35%

1.25%

1st Quartile

12%

41%

0.8%

1st Quartile

5%

35%

0.91%

3rd Quartile

£191

£2.38

4.18%

55.48%

17.82%

3rd Quartile

51%

46%

4.01%

3rd Quartile

27%

66%

4.79%

3rd Quartile

21%

44%

3.95%

3rd Quartile

19%

56%

5.09%

3rd Quartile

11%

50%

2.53%

Average

£136.22

£2.11

2.72%

44.83%

18.9%

Average

43%

40%

2.29%

Average

16%

48%

3.52%

Average

15.8%

40%

3.56%

Average

16%

49%

2.64%

Average

9%

44%

3.27%

Stand-out out figures

Overall conversions averaged at 2.72%, ranging from 0.36% to 9.13%. This represented an increase on the previous 3 months due to Christmas trading.
The average £ per visit was £2.11 (also due to Christmas trading).
Email remained the best source of revenues, converting at 3.56% on average, but only just compared to paid search which converted at 3.52% on average. Two businesses included in the sample had at least 50%+ of their traffic from email, with one of those enjoying conversion rates of 10.44%. The highest conversion rate for email was 13.22%.
Paid search produced an average of 16% of all visits, converting at 3.52%. Four businesses enjoyed conversion rates on paid traffic of well over 5% with the highest being 11.08%.
Bounce rates (as a measure of engagement) showed a large gap between home pages (which get a lot of marketing attention) and all other pages: 18.9% versus 44.83%). Three merchants had bounce rates of over 60% on other pages which indicates a requirement for more engaging content throughout the site as a significant amount of traffic comes directly into category and product pages.

Desktop usage

Bounce

Conversion

Tablet usage

Bounce

Conversion

Mobile usage

Bounce

Conversion

1st Quartile

31.88%

1.32%

1st Quartile

37.96%

0.8%

1st Quartile

39.39%

0.33%

3rd Quartile

49.64%

5.69%

3rd Quartile

45.68%

4.49%

3rd Quartile

60.48%

1.06%

Average

42.37%

4%

Average

42.92%

2.9%

Average

50.7%

1.1%

Standout figures

Bounce rates remain lowest and conversions highest on desktops which is no surprise. However, conversion rates on mobile continue to rise with three businesses were seeing conversion ratios in excess of 3% (compared to 2% in the previous 3 months) with the highest being 3.7% which is significantly higher than the average conversion rate of 2.72% across all merchants in the sample.

By Sarah Willcocks, CEO