Internet marketing and ecommerce makes it faster and easier than ever to buy products online. But despite the wishes of retailers, it still takes time to motivate a consumer to buy an item after they first see it. A recent study from Monetale shows that the majority of online purchases happen with the first 24 hours of shopping.
Monetale’s Ecommerce Quarterly Report (Q1) focused on the some of the shifts we’ve seen in the ways people use the internet for shopping. The report found that most online sales happen relatively quickly, but that it often takes multiple devices for people to make their way through the sales funnel.
For it’s major findings, Monetate’s new report noted that two in five (42 percent) of online purchases during the first quarter 2016 were made within the first hour of shopping. Within six hours from that point, an additional 9 percent of online purchases will happen. And another 16 percent happen within the first 24 hours of shopping.
In short, this means that two-thirds (67 percent) of online purchases happen within 24 hours of the initial visit to a retailer’s website. Equally important is the fact that many of these consumers will switch from mobile to desktop when deciding what to buy.
“Only 42 percent of purchases in the first quarter occurred within the first hour of a shopper’s browsing session. This is incredibly important for brands to understand,” said Lucinda Duncalfe, President and CEO, Monetate. “More than half of shoppers are spending a lot of time in a lot of different places on a lot of different devices before they come back and buy what originally caught their eye. It’s critical then that brands ensure a customer’s shopping experience picks up where it left off, no matter the time or device.”
The data shows that these cross platform transactions are common. The lion’s share of consumers start and end their shopping experience on a desktop, but in the middle, there is a lot of room for mobile to help. According to the report, 90 percent of online shoppers begin their customer journey on a desktop. Similarly, 91 percent complete the journey on a desktop.
However, since the majority of sales don’t happen on the first visit to the site, consumers often have to go back to the website to review the product information for what they wanted to buy. Mondale found that three out of four (75 percent) of ‘lookback’ page views happen on desktops between 8a and 4pm. However, when people are on the go, mobile has a chance to shine. During commuting hours, 40 percent of page views happen on mobiles.
This points to the fact that online retailers need to make it possible for consumers to seamlessly switch back and forth from desktop to mobile. As a previous data point showed, more people finish their shopping on desktop than the percentage that started. This means that some consumers are starting with mobile searches that end with buying items when sitting in front of a desktop.
Business owners and marketers can take advantage of this information by improving the mobile compatibility of their site, improve their mobile commerce platforms, and better integrate their mobile and desktop shopping platforms.
Like many of the reports discussed in these articles, there is more to the Monetale report than can be covered in short article. Business owners and marketers who want to gain some more insights can download a free copy of the Monetate Ecommerce Quarterly report (EQ1 2016) from the Monetale website.
For more information about marketing research, read this article on how Amazon may eclipse Google as a starting point for product research.