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Overview:
Here's a fact for you: Consumer use of mobile devices to access ecommerce websites has grown more than 120% in the last year.
Though explosive growth in this category is a positive sign for the industry, the mobile customer is far different than any other. They:
Bounce from ecommerce sites 50% more often
Add items to their cart 30% less frequently, and
Have cart abandonment rates 10 percentage points higher than other online shoppers
And companies are struggling to respond.
This report, which features exclusive research and insights, including contributions from IBM ExperienceOne, Monetate explores these numbers - and more - while analyzing what they mean to digital marketers and offering insights into how to respond to these changing consumer habits.
3. About the EQ
As ecommerce companies look for ways to increase customer
engagement and sales in a highly competitive online environment, they’re
faced with challenges centered on massive amounts of data. This big data
conundrum goes beyond the collection and storage of information about
customers and prospects.
Using a combination of historical and real-time data allows ecommerce
marketers to glean meaningful insights that result in more relevant
shopping experiences that drive loyal customers who share their
experiences with others. Ecommerce businesses that tackle big data head-
on focus their attention on different customer segments that continue to
be explored in every release of the Ecommerce Quarterly (EQ):
• Predefined: New versus returning; referring
traffic sources; technographics; geography.
• Custom or Proprietary: Point-of-sale;
CRM; customer health.
• On-Site Behavior: Shopping cart activity;
brand or category affinity.
• Behaviors Across the Web: Browsing and purchase
patterns demonstrated on third-party websites.
The EQ also includes Takeaways, ideas and best practices used by leading
ecommerce websites, based on insights gained from the more than
seven billion online shopping sessions that contribute to the analysis and
benchmark reports found in every release.
EQ2 2014
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4. Executive Summary
Mobile: for the global internet, it’s been hailed as an all but certain future.
People use their smartphones more than any of their other devices to visit
social networks and check their email. And, by 2015, they’ll be using them
more than any other device to search for something.
Since the mobile-first trend started, though, there’s been a question as to
when—and how—mobile would fit as an ecommerce player.
Well, it’s happening. In what feels like an overnight turn of events,
smartphones have surpassed tablets in ecommerce traffic share. Mobile
traffic grew 120% between Q2 2013 and Q2 2014, our benchmark data
shows, while tablet traffic grew at a much more pedestrian 35% and
desktop traffic remained flat. That rapid growth means smartphones now
account for more than 16% of the market when it comes to traffic—an
impressive number, considering it accounted for less than 9% at the same
time last year.
Though this is a milestone to mark, and we’re doing so by dedicating this
EQ to exploring mobile in depth, the timing of this change is as notable as
the milestone itself.
That’s because, for all the traffic and for all the promise that mobile brings,
it’s long been plagued by poor KPIs. Yet, developers seem to be cracking
the code on mobile commerce.
Big-name retailers, like Macy’s and Target, are investing heavily in this
area. Both have recently launched image-recognition shopping apps, and
both are building out comprehensive omnichannel strategies.
20.0
15.0
10.0
5.0
0
Q2 2013 Q3 2013 Q4 2013 Q1 2014 Q2 2014
12.16%
10.5%
11.89%
15.14%
16.25%
12.36%
13.84%
14.69%
13.3%
8.66%
Share of Traffic by Device
Mobile Tabletvs
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5. Additional developments are coming from third parties. Consider the
following, all from the last year:
• Apple announced that iOS 8, its latest iPhone/iPad operating system,
will let users skip the manual typing of a credit card number by using
OCR technology. Its “Scan Credit Card” feature will snap a photo of
their credit card, auto-fill the numbers on the checkout page, and, if the
user wants, save the card number for future use.
• Amazon launched a smartphone with its Firefly technology, which
allows users to scan a real-world image and be directed to that product
detail page on Amazon. (Of equal importance, perhaps, is the fact that
developers will be able to tap into the technology through an SDK.)
• Existing social commerce companies rewardStyle and Curalate
• launched competing products—LIKEtoKNOW:IT and Like2Buy—that
make Instagram feeds shoppable. They join other startups in trying to
create quicker paths to purchase for users on a social network that is
near exclusive in terms of mobile traffic.
Though these changes aren’t silver bullets for long-standing issues like
poor conversion rates and low AOV, they’ll likely help. And since they’re
geared toward eliminating some of the main hurdles customers face
on mobile—product discovery, checkout page frustrations, paths to
purchase—these changes should have ecommerce teams thinking more
about how to further improve the shopping experiences.
$180.91
$116.48
$149.53
AVERAGE ORDER VALUE
Mobile Tablet Desktop
CONVERSION RATES
0.83%
2.37%
2.65%
Mobile
Tablet
Desktop
M-COMMERCE TODAY
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6. M-Commerce Today: Opportunity & Challenge
Though mobile devices are now responsible for 16% of all ecommerce
traffic, they’re responsible for less than 4% of all ecommerce revenue. The
reason for the disconnect is simple: people buy less often, and spend less,
when shopping on their phones.
From the start, a mobile customer’s visit to an ecommerce website is
different. And not just by a little bit: Bounce rate is 50% higher, add-to-
cart rate is roughly 30% less, and cart abandonment rate is 10 percentage
points higher.
Further, mobile conversion rate in Q2 2014 was .83%; tablet conversion
rate was 2.37% and desktop was 2.65%. Factor in the disparity in average
order value ($116.48 for mobile versus $149.53 for tablet and $180.91 for
desktop) and it’s clear that mobile commerce is a mobile problem.
Thegoodnewsisthattheexplodingtrafficnumbersmeanevenincremental
improvements can spell significant sales bumps for brands.
But, like we discuss in our Takeaways section, the opportunity to capitalize
off this growth lies in understanding the context of your customer. And
that’s important. Mobile customers aren’t just different when it comes to
KPIs; they’re different when it comes to the sales funnel, too.
Consider: When compared to those customers who made a purchase on a
desktop, it took mobile customers nearly 15% more sessions to complete
that same purchase.
(A session, by Monetate definition, is consecutive activity on a site by one
web browser that expires after eight hours of inactivity, but can persist for
as long as 72 hours, if a visitor is active at least once every eight hours.)
But once mobile customers are “ready to buy,” they do it far faster than
either tablet or desktop customers:
All of that means you need to understand which channels your mobile
customers are using to get to your site—and what buying state they’re in
at that time.
AVERAGE PAGE VIEWS TO FIRST PURCHASE
WITHIN A SESSION
Mobile Tablet
34.5
Desktop
35.421.3
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7. TAKEAWAYS: FINDING WAYS TO HELP YOUR MOBILE SHOPPERS CONVERT
If you’re looking for a theme to this EQ, it’s context.
Because your mobile customers lack the patience of your other customers,
it may be the most important aspect to building a better mobile experience.
An optimized mobile site, then, isn’t just one that is built using responsive
design; it’s one that is built to respond to the customer.
To get the level of insight needed to do this, ask yourself questions using the
“5 Ws” approach:
• Who’s visiting? Are those customers visiting your site new or returning?
Are they logged in? Creating segments will help you answer the
remainder of the questions with more precision than you would be able
to otherwise. And, when you’re ready to turn that knowledge into action,
you’ll be able to create more targeted experiences.
• What are they doing? Are your customers browsing? Buying? Bouncing?
Your analytics and site search data will give you insight into what’s
working on mobile—and what needs to be improved. Understanding
what your customers are trying to do means you can reshape your site to
help them accomplish that with less friction.
• When are they visiting? Is it morning or night? Are your visitors on
broadband or wireless networks? Can you parse out whether visitors
are “showrooming”? Answering these types of questions can help
you determine what improvements you can make that can increase a
propensity to buy (such as PayPal integration or faster load times).
• Where are they coming from? Search, social, email, advertising?
Channels matter. Customer intent isn’t always to make a purchase, and
nowhere is this more apparent than where a customer is coming from.
Targeting based on channel can ensure you keep consistent the message
that got your customer to visit your site in the first place.
• Why are they using their device? With 90% of users switching between
devices to complete a shopping goal, your customers likely won’t
complete their transactions on a mobile device. Whether it’s a shopping
cart carry-over feature or letting a customer easily email PDPs, you’ll
want to ensure they can pick up where they left off.
Making sure you walk through these questions—and execute a plan based
off them—will reap rewards.
Interested in reading more about mobile optimization? Read our case study,
Threadless Turns Upping Conversion Rates Into an Art Form.
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8. Direct-to-Site Customers: A Closer Look
If you’re going to start understanding your customers’ contexts by channel,
start with your most valuable channel. In the case of this EQ, that’s those
customers who knew where exactly where they wanted to go.
Not only does that mobile customer segment make up more than 50% of
mobile commerce traffic, it’s also the most lucrative.
Mobile customers who navigated directly to ecommerce sites studied in
the EQ were more than twice as likely to complete a purchase than those
customers who made it to the site from a search engine. And they were
nearly three times more likely to convert than those who came through an
advertising channel.
TAKEAWAYS
Sticking with the “5 W” approach, here are some segment-specific questions to ask yourself about your direct-to-site customers:
• Though it’s likely that a great number of your direct-to-site customers will be returning ones, you likely have new visitor finding their way to your site in this
way, as well. How are those two customers different?
• What are you, or what could you be, doing for those first-time visitors that’s different?
• Which page on your site are people visiting the most? What can you do to pull an element of that onto the homepage?
THE STATS
Bounce rate: 46.99%
Add to cart: 4.48%
Cart abandonment: 79.98%
Conversion rate: 0.9%
Average pageviews: 4.53
Revenue per session: $1.04
AOV: $105.25
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9. Search: A Closer Look
What’s that saying? The best place to bury a body is Page 2 of Google?
It might be a bit crude, but it’s noteworthy for this reason: the value of
search can’t be understated.
Though mobile customers who visit ecommerce sites directly may be
the most valuable mobile commerce segment out there, those who come
through search aren’t far behind. Consider: mobile search accounts for
another 40% of traffic to mobile commerce sites, and it delivers quality
traffic.
While other channels send mobile customers who bounce from sites at
rates as high as 62%, mobile customers coming from search bounce at a
rate of 39%. Which means, of course, that those customers are interested
in knowing more about you and your products; and that you have a bit
more time to hook a customer. But how that extra time is getting used
doesn’t necessarily mean an increase in conversion.
Search’s add-to-cart rate of 2.14% is a decent enough level of performance
when weighed against mobile customers on other channels, but its cart-
abandonment rate is the highest around: 80.8%.
THE STATS
Bounce rate: 39%
Add to cart: 2.14%
Cart abandonment: 80.8%
Conversion rate: 0.41%
Average pageviews: 4.44
Revenue per session: $0.46
AOV: $105.71
TAKEAWAYS
Sticking with the “5 W” approach, here are some segment-specific questions
to ask yourself about your search customers:
• If your numbers look like our EQ averages, where is the shopping cart leak
happening on your site?
• How can you eliminate distractions from that page?
• What can you do to have those abandoned-cart customers come back on
another device at a later time?
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10. Social: A Closer Look
We’ve heard a few times now about the value of a mobile customer coming
to your site through social. Rarely, if ever, do they convert. And if they do,
the complaints have been, they’re usually stingy.
The first part might not be changing (they’re still converting at a paltry
.12% and have an average bounce rate of 61%), but they’re not afraid to
spend money if you deliver what they’re looking for.
In fact, social mobile customers have the highest AOV of any mobile
customer segment at $106.12. It’s also a figure that’s grown nearly 8% in
the last year, as AOV has increased from $98.80 in Q2 2013.
Mostly, though, social customers don’t seem interested in shopping. On
average, they’re only adding a product to their shopping cart .63% of the
time and they’re only visiting an average of 2 pages per visit.
TAKEAWAYS
Sticking with the “5 W” approach, here are segment-specific questions to ask yourself about your social customers:
• If a shopping cart checkout seems out of the question, what else can you be asking your social mobile customers to be doing?
• How does that request carry through from your social channels? Is it connected?
• When do those requests lead to increased conversions on other devices or through other channels?
THE STATS
Bounce rate: 61.77%
Add to cart: .63%
Cart abandonment: 80.52%
Conversion rate: .12%
Average pageviews: 2
Revenue per session: $0.14
AOV: $106.12
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11. The Year of Mobile Commerce… And This Time It’s True
By Jay Henderson, Strategy Director, IBM ExperienceOne
It seems like every year there’s a prediction that it’ll be
a breakout year for mobile. And if you ever look at Mary
Meeker’s Internet Trends report or read about where the
investments are being made in consumer technology, it’s
not hard to see why.
But those predictions have been wrong. Or partially wrong, at least.
Now, though, it’s safe to say that 2014 is the breakout year for mobile—at
least from an ecommerce standpoint—and Monetate has done a great job
in this EQ of explaining why.
To really capture the tremendous opportunity you have here, though, it’s
likely that you’ll need to rethink your mobile strategy. That’s because most
ecommerce brands have treated mobile as a standalone channel.
Yes, it’s true that mobile customers are far different than desktop, or even
tablet, customers. And, yes, it’s true that there are far more variables in
play when reaching a mobile customer. But that doesn’t mean it can’t fit
within your overarching digital strategy, which, of course, should be built
around the customer.
Mobile Isn’t an Island
When you’re assessing your mobile strategy, the first step to take is
assessing the customer and the customer’s context.
Though that sounds simple, it’s actually a fairly involved process. You’re not
just reworking your site to fit the confines of a smaller screen or including
mobile-friendly features like touch-to-dial capabilities. You’re reworking
your site to ensure it delivers what the customer is looking to accomplish
at that time while also tying back to your other channels.
There are, of course, a number of different ways to start solving that
puzzle. And it’s those little things that often make a big difference.
Mobile customer experiences are difficult to master, given the diversity of
screensizes,operatingsystems,andconnectionspeeds(3G,4G,wifi,etc.).
But if you’re able to build a website that is responsive to those elements,
you’ll give your customers one less reason to leave—not an insignificant
accomplishment, given the mobile shopper’s lack of patience.
At the end of it all, though, you need to be delivering cohesive and
consistent messages across all channels. That means you can’t be looking
at mobile in isolation.
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12. Deliver a Personal ‘Touch’
The road to a better mobile strategy goes through data, of course, and
we’re quickly coming upon a time when you’ll collect plenty of it.
The holiday shopping season offers you a leading indicator of what your
ecommerce customer behavior will look like in the next 12 months, so
having your analytics house in order is incredibly important.
The data you collect from your mobile shopping sessions doesn’t simply
provide you with insight on traffic patterns (though that can be important),
it lets you dive into how your customers behave on your site. Think of it as
free feedback.
With it, you can identify user struggles, improve site navigation and
provide useful content that deepens connections with your brand and
drives conversions. And depending on how you’re collecting that data, you
can segment your customer base in dozens of different fashions to truly
personalize all of that.
Given the amount of hype paid to mobile over the last few years, it’s
important to reiterate: it’s real this time. In the research for our recent IBM
Digital Analytics Benchmark, we found that mobile devices accounted for
almost 35% of online traffic, up 40% year-over-year. And, now, Monetate’s
EQ shows the impact this is having on ecommerce.
It’ll be those brands that are integrating and personalizing their mobile
presence that stand to benefit the most from this growth. And by starting
that process now, you’ll start finding yourself with loyal, high-value
customers for the years to come—no matter the channel.
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13. Video: How to Storytell in a Fast Paced World
It’s all about finding a way to tell your story while finding a way to respect your users’
time. Just remember that this time around it’s more about context than content.
- Gary Vaynerchuck
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25. Average Order Value by US State Q2 2014
Armed Forces - America $257.32
Armed Forces - Europe $204.02
Alaska $204.12
Alabama $148.29
Armed Forces - Pacific $218.32
Arkansas $198.82
Arizona $161.89
California $186.26
Colorado $217.95
Connecticut $165.50
District of Columbia $190.21
Delaware $169.55
Florida $198.13
Georgia $147.77
Hawaii $213.81
Iowa $173.13
Idaho $147.69
Illinois $202.55
Indiana $151.80
Kansas $173.39
Kentucky $140.41
Louisiana $164.71
Massachusetts $168.96
Maryland $151.57
Maine $129.25
Michigan $142.71
Minnesota $160.88
Average Order Value by US State Q2 2014
Missouri $174.87
Mississippi $151.40
Montana $146.39
North Carolina $152.52
North Dakota $161.81
Nebraska $160.11
New Hampshire $151.71
New Jersey $156.07
New Mexico $212.17
Nevada $171.25
New York $176.66
Ohio $146.78
Oklahoma $209.42
Oregon $167.72
Pennsylvania $114.27
Rhode Island $145.43
South Carolina $138.89
South Dakota $158.64
Tennessee $156.47
Texas $285.11
Utah $173.65
Virginia $157.50
Vermont $140.49
Washington $164.79
Wisconsin $189.32
West Virginia $122.92
Wyoming $164.69
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26. For all media inquiries, questions, and feedback regarding the information
in this report, or to obtain copies of previous releases of the EQ, contact:
Matt Helmke
Sr. Director of Branding & Buzz
(215) 987-4441
mhelmke@monetate.com
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27. About Monetate
Monetate is the global leader in cloud-based testing, email optimization
and in-the-moment personalization software that empowers marketers to
create, deliver and measure personalized marketing campaigns across all
touchpoints—at scale.
Customers use Monetate’s solutions to identify important customer
segments, target them with dynamic digital marketing campaigns, and
measure the results of those campaigns—in real time within a single easy-
to-use interface.
Monetate is used by the world’s leading brands to grow revenue faster
by delivering better digital experiences for their customers around the
globe. Founded in 2008, Monetate influences billions of dollars in revenue
every year for world-class companies like Patagonia, Best Buy, National
Geographic, QVC, Celebrity Cruises, and hundreds of other market leaders.
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