Benchmarks for PPC vs. Organic search are hard to come by for e-commerce. A 2009 study on click through data from Internet Retailer and Engine Ready provides some helpful benchmarks for planning e commerce marketing campaigns. The study demonstrated that PPC ads convert into sales at a rate that is 50% higher than organic clicks. (2.03% vs. 1.26%.)
Summary of findings:
Conversion Rates (defined as an e-commerce purchase)
From Paid Search (PPC) - 2.03%
From Organic Search (SEM) - 1.26%
Direct Navigation or Clicking on a Bookmark - 7.38%
From a referral e-commerce site or email - 6.58%
Overall conversion - 3.6%
Order Value/Revenue
Paid Search - $117.-6
Referral from other sites - $109.27
Organic Search - $106
Average order value all retailers - $104.21 (down 37.7% from previous study)
Average Value of a Customer
From a PPC Link - $2.38
From an Organic Link - $1.35
Time on Site
Average - 4 minutes 33 seconds
Direct navigation visitors - 5 minutes, 8 seconds
Time on site correlated with purchase, but not higher average order values
Pages Viewed
Average - 5.2 per visit
Direct visitors or via email - 6.2 average
Seconds Spent on Each Page
Average - 53 seconds
PPC visitors - 66 seconds
Number of Pages Viewed
One page - 43.9% of visitors
Organic Bounce Rate - 48.5%
Direct Access Bounce Rate - 39.2%
Source of Visitors
Direct Access - 40%
Referring Sites and Email - 27.9%
Paid Search - 19.8%
Organic Search - 12.3%
References:
Internet Retailer
Engine Ready
Study Background: The study from Internet Retailer and Engine Ready is based on an analysis of 20.8 million visits and 108 million page views to 26 e-commerce sites from 7/1/08 through 6/30/09. The Engine Ready study looked at 21 of the 27 companies in the sample.
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