This is an excerpt from a story delivered exclusively to Business Insider Intelligence E-Commerce Briefing subscribers. To receive the full story plus other insights each morning, click here.
App users account for approximately 42% of Amazon’s smartphone visits, while visits to Amazon.com make up the other 58%, but those app users take almost 85% of the mobile time spent with Amazon, according to data from ComScore cited by Internet Retailer.
Business Insider Intelligence
This suggests Amazon performs better on mobile with app users, which should influence its strategy in the valuable and growingmobile commerce (m-commerce) space.
Here’s what it means: Amazon’s app users are likely great targets for mobile conversion, but the e-tailer should be doing more to capitalize on its large base of mobile browser users.
- Amazon app users’ outsized share of time spent with the e-tailer on mobile, combined with app users’ higher conversion rates generally, makes these consumers highly valuable to Amazon. Amazon’s app users spent 12.8 billion minutes per month in the Amazon app in 2018, on average, giving the firm far more opportunities to make sales than mobile browser users, who averaged 2.4 billion minutes on the site. And considering apps have significantly better conversion rates than mobile browsers and desktops, according to data from Criteo, these shoppers are particularly valuable.
- But Amazon boasts far more users on its mobile browser, though its mobile site’s flaws may be preventing it from maximizing their value. Amazon had over 162 million unique mobile browser visitors in December 2018 to the app’s 122 million. And its mobile web base is still growing faster, adding more than 14 million users in the five months ending January 2019 while the app brought on a little more than 9 million. Despite this huge mobile browser base, Amazon’s mobile site shopping experience has issues that may be hurting its conversion rate. It has a complicated shipping selection process and slows down new user conversions by prompting them to sign up for Prime — both of which are part of why Amazon placed behind Target, eBay, and Walmart in Business Insider Intelligence’s Mobile Commerce Benchmark.
The bigger picture: All retailers need to find ways to improve the shopping experience on their mobile sites to inspire more usage and conversions through the popular channel.
Mobile web shopping is a top channel for e-commerce, and retailers that improve their mobile sites have the chance to thrive as m-commerce expands. The most popular channel for e-commerce transactions in Q2 2018 in the Americas among retailers that actively promote their shopping apps was the mobile web, which accounted for 43% of transactions, according to Criteo.
So, retailers that can make shopping through it more comparable to their apps — by using progressive web apps or improving features, for example — can boost time spent on their mobile sites and drive more sales from an even larger consumer base.
Interested in getting the full story? Here are two ways to get access:
1. Sign up for the E-Commerce Briefing to get it delivered to your inbox 6x a week. >> Get Started
2. Subscribe to a Premium pass to Business Insider Intelligence and gain immediate access to the E-Commerce Briefing, plus more than 250 other expertly researched reports. As an added bonus, you’ll also gain access to all future reports and daily newsletters to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and benefit personally and professionally. >> Learn More Now
See Also:
- Walmart is winning the race to dominate a $35 billion business
- Alibaba has introduced two import initiatives
- A new wave of online retailers is finding a niche by being what Amazon can’t be
Source: Business Insider – dkeyes@businessinsider.com (Daniel Keyes)