Adobe Digital Index Report sets Marketing Benchmark across the Globe, Defining Best of the Best Companies
? UK top for smartphone visit rate, averaging 31% of visits to a web page
? Technology and financial service industries trail behind for mobile browsing
? Slower growth for tablet browsing - retail sector pulls ahead with 13.2% of visits from tablets
? Telecom businesses best at attracting visitors to their websites and keeping them engaged
? Average conversion rates fall across the board from 2013
LONDON, Adobe Summit EMEA, The Digital Marketing Conference United Kingdom ? Adobe today released its Adobe Digital Index EMEA Best Of The Best Benchmark to help marketers understand their results and how their performance measures up against companies that sit in the top 20%. The study, which compares the performance of companies in five countries in Europe (United Kingdom, Germany, France, Nordics and Benelux) uses metrics such as smartphone and tablet browsing, visit rate, consumption times and conversion, to set performance benchmarks. This is the second year the research has looked at Europe, allowing comparisons to be made between performance here and in the US.
Smartphone browsing is growing faster in Europe
Compared to the US, Europe came out much faster for smartphone browsing. The UK was a clear winner, getting nearly a third (31%) of its visits to web pages from smartphones, a strong year-on-year (YOY) growth of +8.4%. The Nordics also performed well, with the average web page getting a quarter (25%) of visits from smartphones, a YOY growth of +8.7%. The only country in Europe which experienced a similar rate to the US (+5.9%) was France which had a rate of growth at +5.6%.
The top 20% performers, however, are pulling away much faster. In the UK, the web pages of the best performing companies are getting an incredible 52% of visits from smartphones, which is a significantly higher YOY growth of +20.9%. The best performers in Germany and the Nordics had similar figures with a YOY growth of +16.4% and +16.0% respectively.
?The study reveals that while every industry is experiencing increases in smartphone traffic, there?s a clear gap between those companies which have invested in design and functionality for a great mobile browsing experience. And this gap is getting bigger year-on-year,? said Tamara Gaffney, Principal Analyst, Adobe Digital Index. ?Marketers need to look to other regions and industries to learn what?s working and what?s not, and, evidently, when it comes to handling smartphone browsing the US has some lessons to learn from across Europe.?
Slower growth for tablet browsing
Surprisingly, tablet traffic hasn?t been following the same path as the smartphone, with adoption waning in both Europe and the US. The biggest growth was in Germany (+3.4%) and the smallest was the US (+1.3%), less than a quarter of the smartphone growth in the same region.
Whilst traffic is down overall, browsing isn?t about to disappear anytime soon. One area where tablet traffic is still high is retail with the average web page in Europe getting 13.6% visits from tablets. This is closely followed by travel & hospitality with the average visits from tablets at 13.2%.
Financial services businesses have underdeveloped mobile browsing support
In Europe, the financial services industry is trailing behind retail, travel and hospitality, media and entertainment and telecommunications for smartphone browsing, despite the growing trend for mobile banking . The average financial services company gets 19.8% of visits from smartphones, with the ?best of the best? in the industry also underperforming at 26.0%. To put this into context, the average company in the leading industry ? media and entertainment ? gets 29.1% of visits from smartphones with the ?best of the best? out in front with 46.1% of visits from smartphones. This suggests that the financial services sector has been more focused on its mobile app strategy and, with the added challenge of securing customer?s financial information, it has underdeveloped its mobile browsing support.
Additional Findings
? Stickiness (the percent of traffic that stays and engages with a site)
o In Europe, around half of website visits lasted more than one page across all countries
o UK, Germany and Benelux have improved average stickiness rates versus 2013, but France and Nordics have seen rates fall
o The stickiness rate of the ?best of the best? companies was up to 50% higher
o UK has improved average stickiness rates versus 2013, to 48% for average and 72% for top performance
o The telecoms sector is the best at keeping people engaged, with visitors staying on websites for an average of 7.23 minutes - longer than the retail, travel and hospitality, financial services, technology and even the media and entertainment sector
? Visit rate
o Performance in UK and Nordics leads all other regions in average and top performance
o The UK has the highest visit rates with the average number of visits at 2.19 and top performers at 2.73
o US lags behind all but France, with the average number of visits at 1.62 and top performers 1.99
o In Europe, telecoms and financial services showed the biggest improvements since 2013
o Telecoms is the leading industry in 2014 with the number of average consumers visiting the site at 2.52 times per month
? Consumption
o Most countries experienced similar trends across consumption last year, measured by the amount of time spent on a website
o The Benelux countries showed the best consumption figures, with an average of 6.53 minutes on a website
o UK showed the lowest consumption figures, receiving the shortest at 6.07 minutes for average and 7.96 minutes for top performance
o Germany showed the biggest difference between the leading companies (9) and the average performers (6.4)
? Conversion
o Conversion rates down in every country studied compared with 2013
o France, Germany, and the Nordics saw the gap widen between the best and the rest
o For industry conversion rates, only technology and telecoms made small year-on-year gains in terms of conversion rates (+0.13% and +0.15%)
o The biggest drops in conversion rates were for media and entertainment, which fell from 6.9% to 1.4% and for travel and hospitality from 2.2% to 1.6%
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