Our new VP of Retail Strategy, Kevin Ertell (well, I guess he's not so new anymore) has a white paper out today about what kinds of customer acquisition sources drive the best traffic to retail websites. He did this analysis based on our Top 100 research, where we survey about 23,000 visitors to the top 100 retail websites (by sales volume).
The short answer? There is no short answer! You have to look at what drives the most traffic and what drives the best traffic. In the chart below (and in the white paper, available on our website as part of our Top 100 research), you can see which customer acquisition sources drove the MOST traffic (familiarity with the brand, promotional emails, advertising, word of mouth) and which drove the BEST traffic, meaning that it drove visitors who are more likely to buy (online or offline), recommend, and return to the site.
|
What most influenced your decision to visit the site? |
% of respondents |
Satisfaction |
Likelihood to Return |
Likelihood to Purchase Offline |
Likelihood to Purchase Online |
Likelihood to Recommend |
|
Brand | ||||||
|
Familiarity with site/company/brand |
32% |
77 |
84 |
66 |
76 |
79 |
|
Email Marketing | ||||||
|
Promotional e-mail(s) from the company |
13% |
75 |
83 |
61 |
74 |
77 |
|
Advertising | ||||||
|
Advertising: internet |
12% |
72 |
74 |
60 |
70 |
72 |
|
Advertising: TV, radio, newspaper, magazine |
9% |
72 |
75 |
65 |
69 |
73 |
|
Advertising: social networks |
1% |
66 |
67 |
63 |
67 |
67 |
|
Word of Mouth | ||||||
|
Word of mouth: recommendations from someone I know |
8% |
74 |
79 |
58 |
73 |
77 |
|
Word of mouth: recommendations from a social networking site |
3% |
74 |
77 |
61 |
72 |
76 |
|
Word of mouth: product review website(s) |
2% |
71 |
74 |
65 |
70 |
72 |
|
Word of mouth: blogs or online forums |
1% |
67 |
72 |
52 |
67 |
69 |
|
Search | ||||||
|
Search: search engine results |
9% |
69 |
71 |
55 |
66 |
70 |
|
Search: Link from a shopping comparison site |
2% |
67 |
70 |
55 |
66 |
68 |
|
Other | ||||||
|
Couldn't find what I was looking for in one of its stores or catalogs |
4% |
68 |
73 |
67 |
66 |
69 |
|
Had a gift card I wanted to redeem |
2% |
70 |
75 |
60 |
71 |
71 |
|
Mobile phone text messages or alerts |
0.3% |
63 |
64 |
62 |
68 |
65 |
Kevin explores the value of social media customer acquisition sources and comes to the conclusion that while there is a lot of potential, they are still not the end-all-be-all you might think they are based on how much we talk about them.
The chart above represents aggregate data from the top 100 e-retailers. Tell me in the comments how you evaluate the quality of different acquisition sources? Have you integrated clickstream and satisfaction data so that you can compare and contrast traffic from specific sources? Tell us what surprised you most.
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