Data from 65 million ecommerce orders shows the crucial
sources of traffic for ecommerce websites
Ecommerce and online retail is a booming sector, but because
the latest marketing techniques change so rapidly it can be tricky to keep up
with the latest trends whilst also keeping your feet on the ground.
In a new report, Yotpo collated data from 65 million
ecommerce orders representing $2 billion dollars in transactions over 120,000
ecommerce stores, and established what the industry average is for digital
media.
The results make for slightly surprising reading. On the
face of things, Social makes up a healthy 6%, but this is still a relatively
small slice over the overall pie. Paid makes up 5%, which leaves considerable
room for growth, whilst email makes up a rather small 3%. It would be
interesting to see the conversion rates by traffic, as it may be that referrals
from emails are on the site because they’ve decided to purchase, whilst those
from other sources may be more likely to be there to browse or research. I was
slightly surprised search didn’t make up a larger share, since it is how most
customers generally start their buying journey. Investing in better content
marketing efforts could be more than worth it for many ecommerce stores, as if
done well it will attract quality links and boost SEO.
Relying too much one source of traffic leaves you exposed to
risks, as just because a channel is fantastic for generating traffic today
doesn’t mean it will continue to be. Some sites lost out when Panda put
penalties on certain SEO linking practices. Others lost out when Facebook
decided to massively restrict organic reach. If your site had relied
exclusively one of these sources of traffic then the changes may have put you
in some serious trouble.
The best way to avoid these risks is by hedging your bets by
acquiring your traffic from a considerable variety of sources. But what is a good
variety? That’s where the data comes in.
Direct
The big surprise in many ways is how large a proportion of
traffic comes from direct. Fully 40% of traffic came from direct, which
accounts for more ecommerce traffic than any other single source. Direct in
theory is the people who have typed in the URL directly to their browser, but
in reality it means anyone who arrives at the site from a source that cannot be
tracked. The source of this traffic is generally links that have been sent to
friends/colleagues and then copied and pasted into web browsers. Traffic of
this kind is generally referred to as ‘dark social’, as it is comprised of
links that are shared socially, but cannot be tracked. This means ‘dark social’
actually accounts for a considerable percentage of direct traffic.
Dark Social
By its very nature, it is difficult to accurately account
for what percentage of your direct traffic is actually ‘dark social’. However
with direct accounting for 40% of of ecommerce traffic it seems likely dark
social is making up a large proportion of the total. A general rule of thumb is
that for every three people reaching your site via social, a further 7 will be
arriving from ‘dark social’, which will appear as direct. If this is true for
ecommerce traffic then dark social accounts for half of all the direct traffic,
which is 20% of the total traffic. This makes dark social the 3rd largest
source of ecommerce traffic by a considerable margin. Bear that mind when
designing you’re landing pages and crafting the copy for your social shares.
Social is probably more important to your bottom line than you think.
Other statistics on the most popular traffic sources and
media channels for retailers?
If you're not aware of it the xcellent Custora Ecommerce
Pulse showing orders by channel is also of interest for retailers to benchmark
against. This is the latest data in 2016 from the end of 2015.
It's a compilation of traffic or media sources from some of
the top US retail sites which drive sales.
What channels draw the most engaged traffic?
Not all clicks are equal, and some visits are more valuable
than others. Some channels bring traffic that is more likely to spend plenty of
time reviewing the site, whilst others are more likely to bounce back
relatively quickly. Email, Instagram and referral are the stars here.
Conversely, Pinterest and Facebook bring traffic likely to spend only half as
much time on site as the top performers. It is important to tie this
information into budget allocation models, as a click from an email may be
worth considerably more than one form Pinterest for example.
How important is mobile?
Mobile has been a buzz word in digital for several years
now, to the point where it seems almost out-dated to talk about how important
it is as everyone should know by now. Mobile now makes up the majority of
visits across the web, but this is not the case for ecommerce. Because of the
fiddly nature of payment forms, mobile accounts for slightly over 1/3rd of all
ecommerce visits. If your rate of mobile traffic is lower than this it might be
worth seeing if your site needs further optimisation for mobile. Responsive
design should be your first priority, and if this is already in place then it
may be worth a bit of user testing to see if the customer journey is as smooth
on mobile as it is on desktop.
We hope this ecommerce traffic data has been helpful for
benchmarking where you currently are against the industry average.
