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Three-quarters of all online purchases made within the first 60 minutes

Within the first minute of an online shopping session, brands lose 30 percent of their site visitors.

December 11, 2014

Multichannel personalization firm Monetate has announced the release of its latest global Ecommerce Quarterly report (EQ3 2014). The new report reveals that retailers have a 60-minute window to capture a website visitor’s attention. Within that timeframe, nearly 75 percent of consumers visit a site, decide what to buy and complete the checkout process — and if they don’t, they will likely move on. In the report, Monetate breaks down these critical first 60 minutes and offers retailers actionable insights to help speed up conversions.

The EQ analyzes a random sample of more than 7 billion online shopping experiences using “same store” data across each calendar quarter. Averages throughout the EQ are calculated across the entire sample. Key performance indicators, such as average order value and conversion rate, vary by industry and market type. These averages are published only to support the analysis in each release of the EQ, and are not intended to be benchmarks for any e-commerce business, the company said.

Minute zero

Within the first minute of an online shopping session, brands lose 30 percent of their site visitors. All bounces occur within “minute zero,” creating an opportunity in this brief window for marketers to boost performance and more directly drive visitors to the items they’re looking for. EQ3 2014 also revealed that, during this timeframe, 77 percent of consumers are in product discovery mode; 18.9 percent visit product detail pages; 4 percent place an item in their shopping carts; and 0.01 percent make a purchase.

First 15

Most shoppers who convert visit a site with a focused intent. Nearly 52 percent of all purchases are made in the first 15 minutes of a shopping session, with the majority occurring between the fifth and eighth minutes. During these first 15 minutes, 65.5 percent of consumers are in product discovery mode; 26.5 percent visit a product detail page; 7.7 percent place an item in their shopping carts; and 0.22 percent make a purchase.

Middle 30

The middle 30 minutes of the hour-long window reveal a dwindling number of site visitors. At this point in an average shopping session, a visitor has either left the site, made a purchase or is a dedicated browser. Though fewer, the remaining visitors convert at a higher rate, relative to the general visitor population, than at any other time – 0.62 percent during minutes 16-30 and 0.66 percent from minutes 31-45.

Final 15

At the 45-minute mark, 68 percent of all purchases have been made. Meanwhile, minutes 46-60 deliver another 6 percent of converting shoppers — the final bulk before shopping tapers off entirely. Toward the end of the first hour of a shopper’s session, the motivation to buy begins to wane. In fact, following the first hour, e-commerce companies earn just 14 percent of their customers.