Online marketplaces tend to keep a tight lid on specific metrics about sales and traffic, but thankfully data nerds can turn to comScore to get some perspective. In a post published earlier this month, the research firm took a look at an area often hyped by marketplaces – mobile – and confirms that traffic from mobile devices has become significant.
Amazon, eBay and Etsy get a good percentage of traffic from shoppers using mobile devices, as one can see from the chart. On the graph on the left, light blue represents visitors from PC only, purple indicates PC plus mobile, and red indicates traffic from mobile devices. (Amazon received the most number of unique visitors in total for the month of September at 163 million; eBay, 94 million; and Etsy, 20 million.)
The data also shows a big overlap between shoppers using both PC and mobile devices to shop on marketplaces. ComScore also took a look at how mobile shoppers were accessing the sites – browser versus app. It noted that visitiors to Amazon and eBay engage via mobile app as opposed to the mobile web, while the opposite was true for visitors of the remaining leading retailer sites.
ComScore explained, “The reason for the contrast is simple: mobile users only download so many apps. App “real estate” is a limited commodity, as is a mobile device’s storage capabilities. The result is that most people are only going to download their favorite one to three retail apps and use their web browser if they ever need to shop online somewhere else.”
It noted that the most preferred retail apps tend to be the pure plays (i.e. retailers who only do business through the Internet) such as Amazon and eBay. “These companies have long since built a reputation as the go-to sites to buy products on the Internet,” according to comScore.
It’s also interesting to note that Etsy has a greater percentage of shoppers engaging through its mobile app (29%) compared to large retailers such as Walmart (20%) and Target (21%), for example.
It appears that if retailers like Sears and Macy’s can only get 2% engagement through their mobile apps, it’s hopeless to think small merchants could get higher engagements – but since small sellers aren’t represented in this particular chart, it’s advisable to get more data before drawing any definite conclusions.
The full post is available on the comScore website.
