Trends & Behaviors In The COVID Era Q2 2020: Ecommerce Quarterly Benchmarks

Our quarterly ecommerce benchmark report includes average order value and conversion rates by device, source channel, and more. To produce this proprietary data, we analyzed billions of customer sessions across 250+ retailer brands.

Our clients saw volume shift across mobile and desktop with increased conversion rates as more people used digital channels to shop during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Summary

A look at billions of customer sessions makes clear what we already knew: COVID shifted shopping trends and behaviors considerably.

We’re seeing some of that impact on browsing behavior with almost half of sessions in the United States coming from desktop. Meanwhile, users in the United Kingdom are increasingly using their mobile devices to browse, with 75% of sessions coming from mobile.

Meanwhile, conversion rates are up when compared to Q1 of this year, highlighting the shift to online due to lockdown measures across the globe. (It should be noted that when compared to last year, however, conversion rates have taken a hit). As users are in browse mode, retailers and brands should be leveraging what they know about their visitors to deliver superior personalized experiences, using AI to help scale and maximize ROI. Monetate customers who have been leveraging this functionality throughout Q2 have seen a significant increase in conversion rate.

Kibo holiday research, for instance, shows that the segment of shoppers that were new holiday customers the year before are likely to spend more this holiday season when they return when compared to newly returning shoppers. Looking ahead to Q3 and Q4, retailers and brands should be accelerating their personalization programs and leveraging merchandising functionality such as product recommendations to increase RPS and AOV, whilst using optimization tactics for up-selling and cross-selling.

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Benchmarks
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Q2 2020: Ecommerce Quarterly Benchmarks

 Website Visits Trends & Behaviors

Visits from desktop accounted for almost half of sessions in the United States. WFH life has likely led to this shift in behavior. In contrast, tablet use now accounts for only 3% of total sessions—the decline is a trend we’ve seen increase further each quarter since Q2 of 2010!

Interestingly, this change in desktop behavior was not seen in the U.K., however. Mobile traffic accounted for 75% of sessions in Q2 2020 there—a 10% increase when compared to last year, and a 3% increase when compared to Q1 2020.

Website Visits By Device

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Website Visits By Operating System

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Q2 2020: Ecommerce Quarterly Benchmarks

 Page Views Trends & Behaviors

Users in the U.K. are browsing more, seeing a 24% uplift in page views compared to last year (9.18) and last quarter (8.97). We typically see users in the U.K. browsing 10 pages in one session, but in Q2 2020, we saw a noticeable boost, with average page views reaching 12 per session.

In the U.S., we saw 24% less page views per session. With an average of 6.2 page views over the last 12 months, Q2 saw average page views of 5.4 in one session.

Average Page Views By Device

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Average Page Views By Operating System

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Average Page Views By Region

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Q2 2020: Ecommerce Quarterly Benchmarks

 Conversion Rate Trends & Behaviors

As detailed earlier in the report, conversion rates are up almost across the board, highlighting the shift to online since Q1 2020 due to sheltering-in-place protocols.

To reiterate further, compared to last year, conversion rates have slid as a result of the pandemic.

As noted earlier, though desktop sessions accounted for almost half of all sessions in the U.S., this increase in desktop browsing is not reflected in the documented conversion rates. Conversion rate is down 49% versus last year. Not only did user intent change when visiting a website in Q2 but out-of-stock products were potentially a cause for this marked decline, too.

On the other hand, mobile conversion rate in the U.S. was up 31% year-over-year. To maximize this trend, retailers and brands should make sure their website is completely optimized for mobile and figure out how to keep users on-site and converting, even if inventory is an issue.

In the U.K., although sessions were up massively across mobile, conversion rate was ultimately down 11% against last year and 6% compared to Q1 2020.

Conversion Rate By Device

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Conversion Rate By Operating System

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Conversion Rate By Region

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Q2 2020: Ecommerce Quarterly Benchmarks

 Average Order Value Trends & Behaviors

Overall, AOV has suffered in Q2 2020 compared to the same quarter last year. The U.S. has seen the bigger decline in AOV: a 6% decrease compared to the U.K.’s 3%. This is likely due to retailers running promotions to counter the adverse effects of COVID-19 during a quarter that is traditionally a full-priced season.

Diving into device AOV, our customers in the U.K. saw no change from mobile devices year-over-year. While in the U.S., we saw mobile having the lowest AOV in the last 12 months and a 4% decline YOY.

From a channel perspective, in Q2 2020, AOV was down across Direct, Search, and Social compared to Q2 2019. Email was the exception, seeing a 1% uplift versus last year. Compared to Q1 2020, AOV from search and social were up 1% and 4% respectively.

Average Order Value By Category

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Average Order Value By Device

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Average Order Value By Operating System

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Average Order Value By Region

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Average Order Value By US State

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