Shoppers Sent From Twitter Spend More Per Order on Retail Websites
RichRelevance recently released its new Online Consumer Report, which analyzed more than 200 million shopping sessions to take a glimpse at how Americans are browsing and shopping online. Among the findings is that shoppers behave quite differently depending on how they get to a retail website.
According to the report, the online conversion rate (“the ratio of purchase sessions to shopping sessions”) was 2.13 percent in August, up slightly from 2.10 percent in the same month last year.
The overall online average order value was $116.58 in August, down 9.1 percent from $128.27 in August 2010. Increased cost consciousness and shipping efficiencies encouraging smaller purchases are cited as potential key factors for this decline.
The report also found that shoppers on retail sites behave differently depending on how they arrive at the site. For example, shoppers from Twitter spend more per order once they get to these sites.
Traffic from Twitter and Facebook to retail sites has surged in the past year, though these two networks still account for less than 1 percent of total traffic to retail sites.
Facebook leads all channels in its growth as a source of retail shopping traffic, as its contribution to this traffic has grown 92 percent from August 2010 to August 2011, according to RichRelevance.
Organic search engine traffic is still the primary source of traffic for mass merchants, driving 18 percent of all traffic in August. Google accounts for 81 percent of this organic search traffic, while Yahoo and Bing (including MSN.com) account for 9.7 percent and 7.5 percent respectively. AOL accounts for 1.7 percent of organic search traffic.
According to RichRelevance, shoppers who are sent to retail sites from Twitter have a conversion rate of 0.5 percent, the lowest of all the channels included in this study. However, these shoppers have the largest average order value, notching a $121.33 figure.
Shoppers sent from AOL have a conversion rate of 2.9 percent, the highest of all channels, and an average order value of $105.27.
Shoppers from Yahoo have a conversion rate of 2.6 percent and an average order value of $105.13, while shoppers from Bing have a conversion rate of 2.4 percent and an average order value of $104.62.
Meanwhile, shoppers from Facebook have a conversion rate of 1.2 percent and an average order value of $102.59. Shoppers sent from Google have a conversion rate of 1.9 percent and an average order value of $100.16.
“As retailers vie to get their share of an estimated $450 billion in holiday spending, there is a tremendous opportunity to respond to the different ways that people are shopping on their sites,” said David Selinger, CEO of RichRelevance. “The ones who succeed will be those who most effectively wrap the e-commerce experience around each shopper, whether they come from Facebook or Google or a direct email link.”
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