Sourced from eMarketer
A new report by DoubleClick reveals a mixed picture of the state of B2C e-commerce in Q3 2004.
One definite bright spot was the increased use of on-site search by consumers in the purchasing process. DoubleClick found that 9.3% of all sales came through an on-site search function, compared to 6.3% in Q3 2003. The average order amount purchased through an on-site search of an e-commerce Web site rose to reach $126 last quarter, up from $111 the previous quarter and $100 one year before. Through there have been some quarter-to-quarter declines, the overall trend since Q2 2003 has been a significant increase in the average order amount. Year-to-year, the value of an average on-site search-related order increased 26%. However, the overall average order value still sits a bit higher at $146 and the average search-related conversion rate, 2.1%, is lower than the overall rate of 4.6%.
One area of concern for online retailers is that online consumers are devoting less time to looking at e-commerce Web pages compared to one year ago (4.4 minutes in Q3 2004 compared to 4.9 minutes in Q3 2003), but the number of pages they look at during each session has increased year-to-year (from 7.7 page views per session to 10.3). This means that consumers are spending less time on each page. The marketer’s task is therefore more difficult, as there is a smaller window in which to capture the consumer’s attention and induce a sale.
Shopping cart statistics also offer mixed signals. The percentage of shoppers adding an item to their shopping cart (“carting”) rose to 8.9% in Q3 2004, an increase of 63% over the 5.5% carting rate of Q3 2003. The percentage of consumers who started the order process on a carted item was also up, though very slightly, from 52% to 54%. Shopping cart abandonment rates still hover between 50% and 60% (meaning more than one-half of carts are abandoned), and the third quarter of 2004 saw an abandonment rate of 57%, four percentage points higher than Q3 2003’s 52.9%. However, last quarter’s rate was lower than the 60.3% posted in Q1 2004.