Online Merchants' Search Traffic & Revenues, Q3 2012 – Q3 2013 [CHART]

Chart - Online Merchants' Search Traffic & Revenues

The online merchants who comprise the MarketLive Performance Index continue to gain outsized revenues from their paid search traffic, according to the latest MarketLive report. During Q3, paid search accounted for 37.6% of all their search visits, up from 34.3% in Q3 2012. But that traffic resulted in an outsized 45.8% of search revenues, up from 40.3% a year earlier, echoing findings from the first half of the year. Overall, search accounted for a slight majority of traffic and revenues for the merchants in Q3.

Separately, the study looks at smartphone and tablet traffic, finding that these devices combined to account for 35.6% of visits during Q3, up from 32.1% in H1 and 23.3% in Q3 2012.

Smartphone and tablet traffic still have poorer conversion rates than desktops, though. The conversion rate for smartphones was just 0.59%, while for tablets it was 1.99%. (By comparison, it was 3.01% for desktops). Average order value (AOV) lagged on smartphones ($123.97), while tablets ($137.24) and desktops ($139.29) were more or less on par. Read the rest at MarketingCharts.