During the third quarter just ended, 9.3% of online sales came through a site’s search function, according to the most recent E-commerce Site Trend Report from marketing services provider DoubleClick. That’s up significantly from 6.6% in the third quarter of last year.
Conversion rates driven by on-site searches rose as well, to 2.1% from 1.5%. But while the average size of orders driven by an on-site search rose appreciably during the past year, to $126 from $100, that’s still below the overall average order value. “The data suggest that people exhibit different types of shopping behaviors,” according to a DoubleClick press release, “‘searching,’ where users may be less subject to cross-selling because they see fewer pages and are in a mission-oriented mindset, and ‘browsing,’ where visitors may be casually shopping and therefore more susceptible to cross-sell and up-sell opportunities.”
Online marketers are still failing to convince a majority of visitors to complete their transactions, however. Fifty-seven percent of online shoppers end up abandoning their shopping carts before completing the transaction, an increase from 53% a year ago.