As consumers, we don’t treat all purchases equally. We’ll shell out $25 dollars for a t-shirt on a whim, but when buying a new laptop, or planning for a trip, we’ll spend weeks or months scanning through reviews and researching the best options.
As a result, we find that consumers interact very differently within categories with more expensive, higher consideration products than they do with less expensive categories:
- Less expensive categories — like apparel and health and beauty — have stronger conversion rates, larger mobile and social visit shares, and better performance on mobile and social traffic.
- More expensive categories — like electronics, home goods, and travel and hospitality — have lower conversion rates, see less traffic on mobile and from social, and that traffic generates even less engagement.
Expensive ecommerce categories have lower conversion rates.
We can see that, for more expensive categories, consumers are less likely to make a purchase on any given visit. While engagement for consumer electronics and home categories is a little lower than health and beauty and apparel, that doesn’t account for the wider gap in conversion rate. Customers visiting these sites have lower intent to purchase, and more intent to explore and compare.
This is driven by the greater consumer research and investment required for high-ticket purchases. More expensive categories see significant research conducted online followed by in-store purchases. As a result, it’s imperative for expensive brands to develop strong omnichannel journeys that consider mobile, desktop, and in-store behaviors and develop strong affiliate relationships. These brands need to consider platforms that stitch these journeys — including both online and offline purchases — together to understand how in-store dollars were digitally influenced.
For brands in less expensive categories, this signals the need to double down on strategies that boost consumer engagement and loyalty. Investments in robust personalization efforts and loyalty programs can help brands attract greater consumer attention and drive repeat purchases, ultimately capturing a larger share of wallet in competitive markets.
Less expensive categories are more driven by mobile than expensive categories.
Consumers are more likely to visit websites in less expensive categories on their mobile devices than expensive categories. And the gap between mobile and desktop performance is much smaller in less expensive categories. Brands in less expensive categories have better relative bounce rates, page views per visit, and conversion rates than their more expensive counterparts. As a result, less expensive categories are far more reliant on mobile — as categories get more expensive, mobile revenue share goes up.
This should inform how brands design their mobile experience for customers. If a product is expensive, and customers are less likely to convert on mobile. Instead, brands should emphasize information that may help inform decision-making on mobile experiences. Develop call to actions beyond purchases, targeting micro-conversions around gathering first party data and building loyalty. At these companies, it may be even more important to create omnichannel experiences that use mobile for brand building.
Social performance is stronger for less expensive categories.
More expensive categories have lower engagement and much lower conversion rates compared to all-traffic averages. This indicates that less expensive categories are likely to see the largest direct return from investing in social media and may be more likely to benefit from conversion-focused campaigns. Meanwhile, categories with higher average order value can focus more on using social media for brand awareness and loyalty. Social media can be used to educate and engage consumers with campaigns geared toward likes, reposts, and follows that expand reach. Other campaigns may focus on bringing consumers into brand ecosystems, with success measured by member signups or app downloads.
Matt Conan is a member of the Adobe Digital Insights Team. Adobe Digital Insights has been a leader in tracking the digital economy since 2013. Adobe Digital Insights offers the most comprehensive analysis of its kind based on trillions of visits and billions of transactions across the web. With the breadth and depth of our data, we are uniquely positioned to understand the economy, customer journeys and use of creative AI.
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