I was going through an eMarketer article about the value of direct traffic to retail websites.  In a research by Engine Ready, an SEO and Analytics company, it was found that people coming to retail websites by typing the website address  or a bookmark are the most valuable.

The direct traffic has higher conversion rates and average spend than traffic coming from other sources like referrals, paid search and organic search.  The study reveals that people coming directly to the website have a conversion rate of 3.3% with an average purchase value of $170.  They spend over five minutes and view six pages on an average.

The traffic coming through referrals comes second in terms of conversion and average spend.  The paid search and organic search traffic occupy third and fourth places respectively with a lower conversion rate and average spend but with a significant number of page views.

This study does put a question mark on the value of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for online retailers who tend to rely a lot on Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and improving their organic search rankings for keywords.  While one should not undermine the importance of traffic driven by search engine, it is required that retailers study their traffic trends and see what works better for them.

Read the article “Direct Traffic Most Valuable” on eMarketer.

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