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Best of Benchmarks

Commerce continues its roller-coaster ride - with riders feeling the rush of recovering metrics alongside the nausea of turbulent and uncertain economic times.

The Reel Opportunity

Reels are capturing more and more share of ad impressions

The click fix has worn off

Email send volume continues to rise, and click rate falls

Paying the Toll

While paid share rose to nearly 1/3rd of visits, there's more inside the story.

Why Dull is Dying

The rise of grazing includes ad viewing

Losing our App-etite

The app stack appears stalled

App direct open rates, by operating system. iOS sees lower open rates, topping out at 7%, while android breaches 10%

Putting the No in Notifications

Brands are pushing limits, though shopper attention remains fleeting

the growth in popularity of four colors

Going dark

Is color the new black?

URL > IRL ?

Retail footfall remains sluggish

these three pages are the most frequently visited during a shopping visit - product (67% of visits), category (50% of visits) and homepage (27%)

The Popular Detail Page

All that time spent optimizing the PDP is warranted... as long as it is approached right.

A combination column and line chart showing traffic growth, which has been up the past 3 quarters, GMV growth, which most recently fell 2% after rising over the past few quarters, and consumer sentiment which has rebounded recently.

Consumer Confidence or Contradiction

Is the consumer really feeling better?

Two line charts covering the past 5 quarterly year-over-year periods. Growth is trending positive and at 6% in the most recent period. GMV growth has hovered close to 0% with -2% in the last quarterly period.

More flat than fizz

Traffic has turned up, but growth can’t turn the corner

In the past 2 year-over-year periods, AOV has increased, but heavy declines in conversion rate have created consecutive decreases in shopper spend per session.

Conversion craters

Steep conversion declines are dooming session success

A line chart depicting the growth of ecommerce technology adoption across the three major page types: home page, category page, product detail page. Over the last 18 months, the number of third parties present on a product detail page has increased from 41 to 48, a 19% increase.

Apps, apps, everywhere

Commerce technology is throwing a (third) party

A nested tree diagram that shows the share of traffic by device type, paid v. unpaid, and visitor type.

The changing face of mobile traffic

Welcome to the second order impacts of mobile

Three key measures of on-site consumption: session depth time spent per session, and scroll rate each fell on both devices.

Consumption Crisis

Grazing -- more, though fewer visits – takes its toll on visit dynamics.

9.4% of GMV is returned. But, that revenue is not all lost - between retained revenue and upsells from returns, net sales reaches 94.88%.

RMA: Returns Make Another (Purchase)

When life gives you returns…

3% of new visitors become buyers, and about 1/3rd of those buyers repeat.

The Path for Purchasers

Buyer behavior shows that purchases are not merely transactional.

Year-over-year growth has slightly rebounded, with 2 consecutive quarters of increases after reaching a valley of -4%

Dawn or Dusk?

eCommerce Growth issues a heavy hint

Social traffic - overall and especially on mobile - has flat-lined at 8% and 10% respectively.

SLOW-cial traffic?

The data tells us that social traffic growth has flat-lined. Is a deeper dive needed?

The Product Detail Page and Category page combine to deliver 86% of all crawls, and 45% of all visits.

The Pages of our (Search) Lives

The PDP and Category Page have an outsized impact in organic search.

One of Google's Core Web Vitals, Cumulative Load Shift, measures the amount that a screen shifts during a page load.

The Shift is Real

Cumulative Load Shift wreaks havoc on the shopper experience

Inventory turnover has dropped - especially amongst the top performers.

Supply (off-the) Chain

The kinks in the supply chain have been worked out. Now the bad news: Inventory.

Digital Drought

Traffic’s collapse has finally led to the inevitable - a digital (growth) drought.

Eyes on Efficiency

Returns and exchanges are not simply an after(purchase) thought

Keeping it Short

SMS has emerged as a first-class channel. Here’s how productive it is.

Share of traffic from paid traffic rose from 20% to 25% in 2022.

To Pay or Not to Pay

The digital upside-down: with CAC rising, brands are turning to paid channels more.

Product and assortment are the hallmarks of marketplaces, and driving growth of the channel.

Give ‘em what they want

Connecting shopper with product is at the heart of retail - and marketplaces are proving to be expert matchmakers.

Sites earn more conversions at fast load times, while bounces happen when page loads drag on.

Entering… the Bounce Zone

Slow page loads have a rather predictable outcome.

marketing sources perform differently on key site measures like bounce rate, add-to-cart, and abandoned cart rate.

Consider the Source

Not all traffic is considered equal. Knowing your shopper requires knowing their source.

A look into email marketing KPIs, comparing automated flows with promotional messags.

Know When to Send

In Comedy, Stocks, and Email, Timing Wins.

Traffic is flat to down in the last 3 quarters

Traffic Trough

Retail finds itself in unfamiliar territory - the flat (traffic) lands.

When a shopper has 2 poor experiences, they are 76% likely to switch brands

They Can’t Get No…

Attrition soars with dissatisfied experiences – here’s how much.

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