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Does anyone here actually get mobile website conversions comparable to desktop? (Without having a brand which customers see as primarily mobile). From what I h

by robryan 10y ago

Does anyone here actually get mobile website conversions comparable to desktop? (Without having a brand which customers see as primarily mobile). From what I have seen and found in online survey numbers they are far lower.

throwaway13337 10y ago
Successful store owners don't like to share these kinds of numbers, but I can tell you that per ad dollar spent, it's been better than web for a responsive site I manage that shouldn't be very mobile specific. This might be because other store owners don't bid up mobile as much so that the customer acquisition via mobile are cheaper.
- vgeek 10y ago
  With a lower conversion rate, assuming identical order value, the earnings per click will be lower on mobile than desktop. So with a $100 AOV and 5% CVR, your EPC is $5 per click. With mobile, the CVR will be lower (at least from my experience), so your EPC may be $2.50 per click with a 2.5% CVR. If you're converting worse, you just pay less per click. So if you want your ad expense to be 10%, with desktop ads, you can pay $.50 per click, versus only $.25 for mobile. Google's inventory growth has only come from mobile, which converts worse, so it is essentially less valuable. Google has mitigated this by increasing AdWords CTR, which increases their earnings per mille. YoY I've seen AdWords CTR increase ~30% on mobile, likely due to the green ad labels and increased spacing between ads that push organic results further down the page. Google is pushing hard to get advertisers to actually bid more on mobile, even though it converts worse, by eliminating metrics such as Cost per Converted Click in favor of Cost/Conversion (which attributes conversions across devices. Until recently, Desktops & Tablets were lumped into one bidding category, the latter being the worst performing of all 3 devices, the former the best) and pushing equally opaque metrics such as Store Visits. The Store Visits functionality is touted as a huge way to measure cross device in person conversions that big brands with huge, inefficient budgets love (clicks desktop ad, visits store and store visit is logged by phone), but having worked at an out of the way retailer who would be closed on major US holidays, Store Visits held steady even though stores were closed. There isn't anything you can really do, though, since over 90% of all US search traffic is Google.
  - robryan 10y ago
    Yeah, the decoupling of desktop and tablet is a big deal for us, our tablet conversion rate is currently pretty similar to mobile but we have had to pay roughly double per click over mobile to have the bids correct for desktop.
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einarvollset 10y ago
Rule of thumb for mobile web (not app, web) is that conversion rate is roughly half (so: 4% desktop web, 2% mobile web). Source: Google analytics of several companies doing > $20mm annually. I know it's not a popular opinion here, but the only way you approximate or beat desktop web conversion rate and average purchase size is through building a well done, native ecommerce app.
- joshwa 10y ago
  Re: native: sounds like a selection bias-- a user who has gone through the trouble to download an app from the app store is already an interested customer with some degree of brand loyalty, versus your regular mobileweb visitor coming from organic, paid, email, or social, who may not yet have any relationship with the brand at all.
  - einarvollset 10y ago
    Certainly that's true, but I think you might be missing my point: it's not an either or - you need a non crappy mobile website for discovery/top of the funnel stuff. But from experience, if you don't want to resign yourself to half the conversion rate as more and more visitors come on mobile, you need a native app. If you don't do it, some "mobile first" startup will, and eat your lunch.
deleted 10y ago
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by robryan 10y ago

throwaway13337 10y ago

Successful store owners don't like to share these kinds of numbers, but I can tell you that per ad dollar spent, it's been better than web for a responsive site I manage that shouldn't be very mobile specific. This might be because other store owners don't bid up mobile as much so that the customer acquisition via mobile are cheaper.

vgeek 10y ago
With a lower conversion rate, assuming identical order value, the earnings per click will be lower on mobile than desktop. So with a $100 AOV and 5% CVR, your EPC is $5 per click. With mobile, the CVR will be lower (at least from my experience), so your EPC may be $2.50 per click with a 2.5% CVR. If you're converting worse, you just pay less per click. So if you want your ad expense to be 10%, with desktop ads, you can pay $.50 per click, versus only $.25 for mobile. Google's inventory growth has only come from mobile, which converts worse, so it is essentially less valuable. Google has mitigated this by increasing AdWords CTR, which increases their earnings per mille. YoY I've seen AdWords CTR increase ~30% on mobile, likely due to the green ad labels and increased spacing between ads that push organic results further down the page. Google is pushing hard to get advertisers to actually bid more on mobile, even though it converts worse, by eliminating metrics such as Cost per Converted Click in favor of Cost/Conversion (which attributes conversions across devices. Until recently, Desktops & Tablets were lumped into one bidding category, the latter being the worst performing of all 3 devices, the former the best) and pushing equally opaque metrics such as Store Visits. The Store Visits functionality is touted as a huge way to measure cross device in person conversions that big brands with huge, inefficient budgets love (clicks desktop ad, visits store and store visit is logged by phone), but having worked at an out of the way retailer who would be closed on major US holidays, Store Visits held steady even though stores were closed. There isn't anything you can really do, though, since over 90% of all US search traffic is Google.
- robryan 10y ago
  Yeah, the decoupling of desktop and tablet is a big deal for us, our tablet conversion rate is currently pretty similar to mobile but we have had to pay roughly double per click over mobile to have the bids correct for desktop.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

einarvollset 10y ago

Rule of thumb for mobile web (not app, web) is that conversion rate is roughly half (so: 4% desktop web, 2% mobile web). Source: Google analytics of several companies doing > $20mm annually. I know it's not a popular opinion here, but the only way you approximate or beat desktop web conversion rate and average purchase size is through building a well done, native ecommerce app.

joshwa 10y ago
Re: native: sounds like a selection bias-- a user who has gone through the trouble to download an app from the app store is already an interested customer with some degree of brand loyalty, versus your regular mobileweb visitor coming from organic, paid, email, or social, who may not yet have any relationship with the brand at all.
- einarvollset 10y ago
  Certainly that's true, but I think you might be missing my point: it's not an either or - you need a non crappy mobile website for discovery/top of the funnel stuff. But from experience, if you don't want to resign yourself to half the conversion rate as more and more visitors come on mobile, you need a native app. If you don't do it, some "mobile first" startup will, and eat your lunch.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]