Site search drives up average order size 24% in Q1 from Q4, study says
Online shoppers using site search increased their average order size 24% to $113 in the first quarter from $91 in Q4, DoubleClick Inc. says in its Q1 2004 E-Commerce Site Trend Report. It notes that online shoppers overall viewed more pages, increased sales conversion rates and were more likely to place products into shopping carts. The report notes that page views per visit increased 22% in Q1, to 11 from nine in the prior quarter, as overall conversion rates rose to 4% from 3.5%.
The bad news is that for every $1 in sales, shoppers abandoned $5 in shopping carts, DoubleClick says. Retail web site visitors were 25% more likely to place something in a shopping cart in Q1 than in Q4, but were 14% less likely to reclaim those carts after continuing to shop, indicating an increase in comparison shopping, DoubleClick says.
“It’s encouraging to see conversion rates increasing, although abandoned shopping carts still represent an enormous opportunity cost,” says Court Cunningham, senior vice president of marketing. “This increasing challenge should be viewed as a re-marketing opportunity using targeted promotional or product reminder e-mails. Overall, carting analysis and optimization will likely have a great deal of impact on a marketer’s bottom line.”
The report also cites the high value of repeat customers, even though they account for only 1% of web site visitors. Repeat customers have the highest conversion rate at 20%, spend the most time per session at average of 7.69 minutes, and generate the most page views per session at an average of 16.83.
DoubleClick adds that non-buying visitors in Q1 accounted for 95% of all web site visitors, for 58% of all products placed in carts -- and for 78% of all abandoned carts.
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