Adobe Digital Index has released a new study [pdf] providing online benchmarks across 5 industries. The results indicate that the “best of the best” draw up to 50% higher share of smartphone visitors than average and up to 30% higher share of tablet visitors. Comparing the numbers across industries also reveals that high tech sites lag other industries by a significant margin in terms of smart device traffic.
For example, the “best of the best” high tech sites derive 4.2% of visits from smartphones, far behind the proportions seen by the top financial services (9.7%), travel and hospitality (15.6%), retail (16.1%) and media and entertainment (17.4%) sites. Similarly, in tablet share, even the best high-tech sites (2.8%) trail the average site in each of the other industries. (The best retail sites get 13.3% of their visits from tablets.)
Adobe counts this as a missed opportunity for high tech sites, given that “tablet users love gadgets.” Meanwhile, a high percentage of visits from tablets is good news for retail sites, given high conversion rates and order values from the devices.
In other benchmarks, Adobe indicates that:
- Best-in-class financial services sites sport the best stick rate (percentage of visits that last more than one page), at 72%, although travel and hospitality sites have the best average (58%);
- The best retail sites boast the highest number of pages per visit, at 8.53, about 28% higher than the average retail site (6.68);
- Top-performing media and entertainment sites achieve an average of almost 12 minutes per visit, one-third higher than the average (close to 9 minutes); and
- The best-of-the-best travel and hospitality sites see a conversion rate of 5.4%, ahead of the top-performing retail (2.9%) and high tech (1.6%) sites.
About the Data: The data is based on 15 billion visits in January 2013 and is comprised of the aggregated and anonymous data from more than 600 websites.
