Monetate’s Q4 e-commerce report [download page] has been released, and it shows that when it comes to mobile commerce, there continues to be one dominant player: the iPad. According to the study, the iPad’s commanding share of tablet traffic to e-commerce sites means that the device alone delivered more traffic than all smartphones combined. In fact, the iPad was solely responsible for more than 1 in 8 visits to an e-commerce site during the quarter.
Tablet traffic as a whole continues to grow as a percentage of e-commerce site visits, up to 14.58% share among the sample of clients measured for the latest report. That’s up almost exactly 5 points from 9.55% in Q4 2012.
While the iPad is the clear leader among tablets for e-commerce traffic, its share has slipped a little, down from 91.1% in Q4 2012 to 87.5% in Q4 2013. That drop has primarily come at the expense of Android tablets, which have seen relatively fast growth from 6.2% share of traffic to 10.5% over that time period.
While the iPad’s share of tablet e-commerce traffic may have dipped slightly over the past few quarters, it still shines in terms of conversion rates and average order values (AOVs). Its 2.72% conversion rate during Q4 2013 was far ahead of comparable rates for Android tablets (1.82%) and Kindle Fire (0.82%), and that’s an edge that it has maintained for several quarters now.
Moreover, when it comes to AOVs, the iPad continues to put some distance between itself and the competition: its $155.36 mark in Q4 continued to outpace Android tablets ($109.80) and the Kindle Fire ($123.44).
Indeed, the results demonstrate that for conversion rates and AOVs, the iPad more closely resembles results from traditional computers than it does other tablets.
Turning to smartphones, the study indicates that the devices rose to comprise 12.2% share of e-commerce site visits in Q4, from 8.8% in Q4 2012. The iPhone remained the dominant device, accounting for 59.6% of smartphone visits, versus 39.1% for Android and 1.4% for Windows. Those figures have remained mostly stable, although Windows’ share appears to be growing quickly (relative to its tiny base).
The iPhone also outperformed Android and Windows phones in terms of conversion rates (1.09%, 0.9%, and 0.7%, respectively). However, Android phones took the lead in terms of AOVs, outpacing the iPhone by about $10 per order ($135.75 vs. $125.98).
Overall, smartphone and tablet traffic grew to represent 26.8% share of e-commerce visits among the sample of retailers selected for the report, up from 18.4% a year earlier.
About the Data: Monetate’s E-Commerce Quarterly analyzes a random sample of over seven billion online shopping experiences using “same store” data across each calendar quarter.
Averages throughout the EQ are calculated across the entire sample. Key performance indicators, such as average order value and conversion rate, will vary by industry/market type. These averages are published only to support the analysis in each release of the EQ, and are not intended to be benchmarks for any e-commerce business.
