E-commerce 2023: The latest data and forecasts for all things online retail growth

It's interesting to look back at e-commerce growth over the last few years and think forward to the future of this industry. As demonstrated by these charts from Statistica, the annual revenues of the US e-commerce industry shot up in 2020 and 2021. What's more, despite recent growth slowing slightly, Statistica Market Insights estimates strong continued growth in this area in 2023 and beyond. The reasons for this are two-fold - the rise of revenue from total retail sales, both in the US and worldwide, and also stark growth in the % of the total retail sales being e-commerce. This constitutes a much larger share than previously to the pandemic, showing that some of the rapid changes to…

Our compilation of the latest social media statistics of consumer adoption and usage of social networking platforms

Social networks have transformed marketing and, as this post shows, their popularity is still growing in our latest global social media statistics research summary for 2023. Networks vary in popularity with different demographics and they're still evolving. Research by Global WebIndex that we reference in this article shows that globally, 60% of the world's population uses social media. The average daily usage is 2 hours and 24 minutes (April 2023). We'll keep this post updated during 2023 as the latest statistics are published drawing on our recommended top 10 digital marketing statistics sources. We'll be pointing to new data on the popularity of social media from Global Web Index (worldwide), Pew Internet Surveys (US) and OfCom (UK), and most recently the Datareportal April 2023 global overview. This post will apply the…

Sources to research the importance of digital marketing in your industry sector

Are you investing sufficiently in digital communications? Naturally, digital marketing objectives for founders, entrepreneurs, and leaders of corporations will differ - as does optimizing digital marketing for businesses - but keeping your digital marketing strategy at the front of your mindset when planning for growth is the key to success for businesses of all shapes and sizes. The Smart Insights RACE framework and growth system involves constantly scanning for new opportunities to help make your business more competitive using both the latest digital communications techniques and reliable, well-established techniques such as search engine marketing, social media and email marketing. A strong digital marketing strategy means ensuring you're investing wisely and reaching, attracting, and retaining your prime customers. In this article, I will recommend the best sources to help you review the importance of digital marketing for your business, structured around…

Consumer mobile usage and adoption. Use our mobile marketing statistics compilation to inform your digital marketing strategy and mobile user experience

"Mobile to overtake fixed Internet access by 2014" was the huge headline summarizing this bold 2008 mobile marketing prediction by Mary Meeker, an analyst at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers when reviewing technology trends. That same year, Eric Schmidt of Google exhorted businesses to take a 'Mobile First' approach to designing web experiences, informed by customer-focused smartphone analytics. Our mobile marketing statistics compilation contains 15 years later, in 2023 understanding mobile engagement of online users is more vital than ever so digital markers can engage and influence their mobile audience. Today, the latest research from Statista shows that more than half of all web traffic is mobile. In this compilation, we'll share the best quality statistics on how consumers interact with brands…

Our recommendations of the best global online marketing consumer adoption and marketing benchmark statistics

Online marketers love statistics about digital marketing. We do too since they enable us to use a more data-driven approach to inform our future investments. They allow us to review the growth in customer adoption of the latest digital platforms and technologies, make the business case for investment in marketing and allow us to benchmark our growth and performance against competitors. From reviewing thousands of stats sources over the years, I've found that there are a very small number of quality online marketing statistics sites and sources which are updated at least annually and have a representative sample size from different countries. Here we share our experience of ten of the best, most reliable free and paid sources we use to update our benchmarks. Everyone has their favourites, but I thought it would be…

Keyword research data reveals the SEO CTR rewards for top of SERP rankings in Google. Inform your SEO marketing strategy with the latest trends

You often hear company owners saying “I want to rank top” for their target keywords. Although this may be an unrealistic hope, they’re right to say this since they realize that claiming the top position in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) drives up your SEO click-through rate CTR like nothing else. 2023 data from firstpage.com demonstrates that ranking #1 generates a typical CTR of 39.8%. That's more than double the CTR for 2nd position, 18.7%, and nearly 4x the CTR for 3rd position, 10.2%. Savvy marketers understand that establishing a strong organic ranking for your content runs rings around CTRs for paid ads! So, if you're not already, 2023 is the right…

Real-world data shows the most crucial sources of traffic for e-commerce websites

E-commerce/online retail is a booming sector. But because the latest marketing techniques change so rapidly, it can be tricky to keep up with the latest trends whilst also keeping your feet on the ground. Datareportal's 2023 global overview shows that search engines and social networks are the 2 biggest sources for self-reported online brand research. But how are users navigating to e-commerce websites?

B2C top traffic sources

Hubspot's 2022 user survey, compiled by 400+ users, primarily of B2C audiences, demonstrates a mixed bag in terms of traffic attribution. The biggest question mark is a sizable chunk of 22% direct traffic, which could include: 'Dark' social (untrackable social shares) Bookmarked traffic Direct links from pdfs, shared documents, or other non-trackable sources But interestingly, after direct, we see…

2023 Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) statistics: Discover the latest search usage and adoption data to inform your search strategies

Statistics help us turn data into information, allowing us to make informed and rational decisions and that's exactly the purpose of this article. We're huge fans of search engine marketing, both search engine optimization and paid search marketing. But with behavior changing so quickly, it's vital to keep on top of search engine marketing statistics to inform your strategy. We have a wide range of tools and templates for marketers looking to make data-driven marketing decisions. Whether you're looking for channel excellence or marketing strategy advice, we've got resources to support your digital marketing optimization journey. [si_blog_banner_cta]

Search marketing data for 2023 - February update

This summary of search engine marketing statistics is aimed at helping you make better-informed decisions about the running of your search marketing. I'll start by reviewing…

Our latest summary of ad clickthrough rates statistics in the US, Europe, and Worldwide is designed to help you benchmark your paid digital and social media ads, set marketing budgets, and define your goals

If you're forecasting your digital media spend, you need to compare the ROI of your display ads, paid social, Google Ads, and social media. Depending on your objectives, it's worth reviewing and benchmarking the latest metrics like average click-through rates, average cost per click, and cost per lead. I've put this compilation together to help marketing professionals create direct response conversion models for digital marketing campaigns. By creating budget models using known benchmarks for average CTRs and digital media click-through costs, you can better forecast your return on investment from digital media ads. Our budgeting and forecasting spreadsheets include: Simple digital channel planning spreadsheet Conversion and revenue model spreadsheet Month-by-month customer acquisition spreadsheet …

E-commerce conversion rate and lead generation landing page stats for desktop and mobile devices for benchmarking averages across different industries

As you will know, conversion rates are often used as a KPI to review the effectiveness of e-commerce sites. Naturally, all site managers and owners want to know the benchmarks - "how do our conversion rates compare?". As consumer and business confidence falls, it's more important than ever to audit and optimize your marketing success metrics. In this post, I have compiled different free industry sources focusing on retail e-commerce conversion. At the end of this article, we also feature an analysis of landing page lead generation conversion rates by industry sector towards the end of the post. We keep this compilation updated as new conversion data is published in 2023.

E-commerce conversion funnel

This funnel-based view of the conversion process is a useful starting point since as well as the typical average basket…