Smartphones and Tablets: 32% of E-Commerce Traffic in 1H 2013

According to a report from MarketLive, a provider of e-commerce technology for merchants, nearly a third of traffic to e-commerce sites came from smartphones and tablets during the first half of 2013 (January-June). However, mobile devices accounted for a much smaller portion of revenue.

Smartphones and Tablets
MarketLive’s mid-year “Performance Index” report found that 18.6 percent of e-commerce traffic came from smartphones in the first half of the year, while 13.5 percent came from tablets. The remaining 67.9 percent of traffic came from desktops.

The company notes that mobile devices are expected to account for 44 percent of e-commerce website visits within the next year.

When it came to revenue, tablets accounted for 11.8 percent of the pie, while smartphones accounted for just 2.7 percent. The remaining 86.6 percent of e-commerce revenue was attributed to desktops.

According to MarketLive, tablet-attributed revenue grew eight times faster than smartphone-attributed revenue, and tablet traffic grew three times faster than smartphone traffic. However, smartphone add-to-cart rates improved by 15 percent in the first half of the year, while add-to-cart rates declined for both tablets and desktops.

The average order size for smartphones was $123.60 in the first half of 2013, while tablets had an average order size of $151.42. Tablets boasted a conversion rate of 1.77 percent, while smartphones had a conversion rate of 0.59 percent.

Paid vs. Organic Search
MarketLive also looked into paid vs. organic search engine visits to e-commerce sites. It found that organic search visits accounted for 31 percent of total search engine visits in the first half of the year, while paid traffic accounted for 18 percent. The split was fairly close to those figures when it came to revenue: organic search was attributed with 27 percent of revenue, while paid was attributed with 21 percent.

Paid search traffic exhibited a better conversion rate, average order size and pages per visitor than organic search, according to the report.

Key Takeaways
MarketLive imparted some main takeaways for e-commerce merchants:

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