Recent article on direct navigation

[chris]

A current article on direct navigation stats:

"A new report by Mashable makes it clear that direct navigation to online retail websites is biggest driver of ecommerce sales. According to a study of over 75,000 online retail transactions recently released by Forrester, 30 percent of all online purchases from new customers result from direct navigation – users typing domain names directly into their browser bars to reach the retailers’ sites."

http://www.business2community.com/tech-gadgets/domains-still-dominant-in-ecommerce-0294653

What are other members seeing with their own stats? Is direct navigation still a top source of traffic?

Cheers,
Chris

 

[johno69]

I don't imagine it's a big factor in AU for small online retailers. Unless you have good brand awareness out in the market you will always rely heavily on search.

 

[findtim]

i have a small business client doing @ $50k p/a online and the same for inbound calls that result in sales whilst the customer is viewing their site, but vertually nothing from direct imput of the domain as they have no real branding.

most their sales come from people out of their area so GEO is the big thing for them.

all this comes from organic, they don't do adwords but will be doing it soon.

new customers result from direct navigation – users typing domain names directly into their browser bars to reach the retailers’ sites.

this can only result from brand awareness so SMB's mostly don't have that.

also they state "new customers" , i think the stats are to broad, some retailers are mostly one off purchases eg: a hand bag, which may take another year before another purchase is made, VS a consumable product that may be purchased monthly or weekly?

there are a lot of people making good livings from tiny sites that are eating away at big retailers and i'm not just talking ebay, these people seem to be using facebook instead of email marketing software.

tim

 

[snoopy]

With the 30%, the driver is likely word of mouth and offline advertising. Url's are advertised all day long, everywhere. The figure is likely to be far higher than a business only advertising online is likely to see.

"Less than one percent of all transactions across both new and repeat customers were driven by social networks."

lol

 

[SAXIE]

It had to be a domain name that is easily remember, therefore a EMD would have an advantage