• by Charlene Weisler , Op-Ed Contributor, September 14, 2022

As the digital landscape becomes more competitive and complicated, it’s become even more important to monitor all aspects of a digital channel.

Contentsquare, in its 2022 Digital Experience Benchmark Report, advised businesses to adopt an expansive and respectful view of current and potential customers by understanding their digital behavior across platforms and ad categories.

Findings

According to the report, which examined data from 2021, online traffic peaked in November during the prime preholiday shopping period, resulting in $201.32 billion in sales. As people continued to work from home, the study found that although mobile continued to dominate with 58% of total online traffic, desktop traffic increased +18% from 2020, and mobile traffic decreased 9%. This varied by industry.

The data also showed that online experiences result in great variations in the consumer shopping journey. Eighty-five percent of people said that they are unhappy with their online experiences, and 54% of shoppers said that they visit multiple websites before deciding.

Therefore, only about half (51%) of traffic consists of returning users across all industries on average. For businesses trying to attract and retain customers, the report noted that unpaid traffic has far greater traffic impact than paid (75% compared to 25%).

Stickiness is also a challenge. On average, consumers spent 55 seconds per page, four minutes and 17 seconds per session, and four viewed pages on average per session. Overall, desktop offered greater average time spent than mobile across all industries, as well as a higher average order value than mobile.

Takeaways

So what are the next steps for marketers? Contentsquare suggested the following takeaways to maximize success:

Don’t get ‘channel’ vision. In the global marketplace, potential customers are everywhere and these customers are transacting all the time on multi-devices in and out of home. As consumers head back to brick-and-mortar stores, the most successful brands will look beyond digital and embrace a more holistic view of the customer journey – both online and offline.

Consumers want to be respected. Be respectful of your customers’ time with a smooth and simple navigation and checkout process. Seamless experiences help customers remain loyal. Load time delays can impact conversion rates.

Expectations are higher. The average bounce rate increased from 47% in 2020 to 50% in 2021. At the same time, there was a +328% increase in page views in sessions where a conversion took place. This indicates high consumer expectations and increased online research to find the best deals.

“Understanding exactly how and why your shoppers behave the way they do online at each stage of their journey is the magic ingredient for unlocking the perfect online customer experience,” the study concluded.

The study was based on anonymized and aggregated data from 46 billion user sessions across 3,870 global websites from January 1, 2021 to December 31, 2021. Data was collected from desktop, mobile web and tablet across 14 industries to learn more about the evolution of online experience and how customer behavior has changed. Online behavior was tracked according to origination, new or returning and device used.