Study: Consumers get smart about e-commerce in Q3

Consumers are making more e-commerce transactions, and smartphones are helping to drive growth.



According to the new Q3 2015 Performance Index report from e-commerce technology platform MarketLive, e-commerce sales continue to improve across all retailer categories (apparel, beauty, home furnishings, catalog, brick-and-mortar, and brand-direct), and across all major performance metrics. These include revenues (+13.5%), traffic (+19.8%), and average order value (+3.9% to $158).



Among the stand-out results, once again smartphones are making a bigger impact on retailing in every way as more consumers purchased via their smartphones in third quarter 2015 than they did in the year-ago period. This includes visits (+35%), orders (+69.5%) and revenue (+97.9%).



Also, the third quarter saw traffic shifting away from search engines (-6.3% organic / -5.8% paid) and social sources (-16.5%), and toward traffic sourced from direct marketing (+17.6%), indicating that retailers are doing a better job with their customer retention efforts.



Other statistics uncovered in the Index include:



• Housewares & furnishings retailers led the index with a conversion rate improvement of 20% and year-over-year revenue growth of 28%.



• Apparel and Catalog retailers experienced the highest add-to-cart rates (11.5% and 10.6%, respectively).



• Cart abandonment rates improved 7% among smartphone shoppers, but checkout abandonment among smartphones remains at nearly 62% (compared to a 49% average for desktop).



• Compared to desktop and tablet, shoppers on smartphones now account for 30% of all traffic and 14% of all revenue (which is 98% higher than the third quarter of last year).



• Facebook accounts for 68% of all social revenue and 53% of all new social visits.



• Growth in revenue from social slowed to 73%.



• Overall social traffic via smartphones increased 234%.