• by Adam Bernard , August 27, 2001

Jupiter Media Metrix is reporting that smaller U.S. wireless carriers are engaging customers on the web more effectively than their larger counterparts, and are more likely to reduce customer acquisition and service costs as a result. New Jupiter wireless research reveals that Sprint PCS and Nextel convert almost three times as many website visitors to pages secure for transactions on their wireless services sites than the top two U.S. wireless carriers, Verizon Wireless and Cingular. According to Media Metrix ratings data, Sprint PCS and Nextel convert 66 percent and 62 percent of their visitors to secure pages, compared to just 23 percent for Verizon Wireless and 12 percent for Cingular. AT&T, the third largest U.S. wireless carrier, also falls behind Sprint and Nextel by converting only 38 percent of its visitors to secure pages.

Data from AdRelevance, Jupiter Media Metrix's online ad tracking service, shows that online advertising is not always effective in driving customer engagement on the web for wireless carriers. While AT&T Wireless Services purchased almost 500 million ad impressions from February 2001 to April 2001, Sprint PCS receives more traffic and has been more effective in engaging visitors on its site with far less advertising -- just over 100 million ad impressions during that time. Both have had considerable success in driving traffic to their sites, averaging approximately 1.5 million or more unique visitors per month during that time period, while Cingular has experienced a decline in unique visitors (from 1.4 million in February 2001 to 760,000 in March 2001) despite purchasing over 100 million ad impressions.