eCommerce Traffic & Revenue Trends By Device, Q2 2014 [CHART]

Smartphone traffic to online merchants continues to grow, but tablet traffic remains more valuable, according to the latest quarterly performance index from MarketLive, providing further support to the notion that smartphones are for research, tablets for purchases. The MarketLive study indicates that smartphones alone accounted for almost 1 in 4 visits to the tracked merchants during Q2 2014, up more than 50% from a year earlier. But despite being behind in traffic, tablets accounted for almost twice as much revenue as smartphones. For the quarter, tablets comprised 12.7% of revenues, compared to 6.7% for smartphones. Even so, smartphones’ share of traffic and revenues grew at a faster rate than tablets.

The difference in revenue share is the result of better conversion rates and higher average order values on tablets. For the quarter, the subset of MarketLive sites (required to be active from January 1, 2013 or prior in order to measure same-site trends) measured for the report saw smartphone traffic convert at an average rate of 0.67%, well behind the rates for tablet (2.01%) and desktop (2.22%) traffic. (That order has also been found by Monetate, with tablet conversion rates closer to desktops than smartphones.) Average order values (AOVs) on smartphones ($98.73) also lagged comparable figures for both tablets ($112.05) and desktops ($118.20) by a considerable margin. Read the rest at MarketingCharts.