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Smartphone Revenue Share Rose 125% In Q4 2014

It can take one click to make a purchase from a smartphone when consumers use a retailer's app that stores credit card and shipping information. Apparently brands and retail stores caught on. In Q4 2014, Web site traffic to mobile sites grew 49%, and 44% of total Q4 visits and nearly half of holiday season visits were from mobile devices. Mobile shoppers didn't just research, they bought. Among those researching, orders from smartphones rose 87%, and conversion improved by 53%, compared with the year-ago quarter, per a study released Tuesday.

The MarketLive Quarterly Performance Index reveals that order share rose 97%, while smartphone revenue increased 119%, revenue share was up 125%; tablet average order value saw a nine percent boost; and AOV on smartphones rose 10%.

Despite the jump in the smartphone conversion rate, it came in three times lower than computers and two times lower than tablets -- which, although stronger, still converted .7-times lower than computers. Bounce rates roes to 47% on smartphones and 37% on tablets, compared to 33% on computers, among MarketLive clients.

More smartphone shoppers put products in baskets, but at 6.2%, the smartphone add-to-cart rate remained low relative to tablets at 10.0%, and computers at 10.8%. Smartphone RPV came in at $0.97; tablet, $2.40; and computer, $3.77.

Understanding cross-device shopping became -- and will remain -- the biggest challenge facing ecommerce marketers in 2015, but getting a better grip on the behavioral patterns will become the biggest opportunity.

Overall across all device types, 57.66% of traffic to retail Web sites came from organic search traffic in Q4 2014, down 3.70% in the year-ago quarter. Some 42.34% of traffic to retail Web sites came from paid search traffic in Q4 2014, up 5.53% in the year-ago quarter.

For overall search revenue share across all device types, organic search contributed 49.68% in Q4 2014, down from 54.53% in the year-ago quarter. Paid search revenue contributed 50.32%, up from 45.47, respectively, per MarketLive.

Brick-and-mortar retailers grew overall online revenue by 25.4% during Q4 2015 among MarketLive clients, which included year-over-year growth in smartphone's share of revenue at more than 162.5%

The MarketLive Performance Index was produced by analyzing anonymous, aggregated, U.S. traffic and revenue data from MarketLive ecommerce Web sites that have continuously reported data from Oct. 1, 2013 through December 31, 2014 or before, including desktop/computer data and data was sourced from Google Analytics.

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About the Author

Laurie Sullivan is a writer and editor for MediaPost. You can reach Laurie at lauriesullivan@gmail.com.