Best of the Best: A Digital Benchmark
You can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you stand – a truth which, in digital marketing terms, outlines why contextually relevant data is vital for success.
Our team at Adobe Digital Index have just shared their latest findings from the Best of the Best EMEA report which aims to help European marketers find their place in the digital “big picture”. The report uses six key performance indicators to establish average and top 20% performance benchmarks across the web.
This year’s study was dominated by mobile and we saw some revealing results:
- 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
I’m thrilled to once again be moderating the CMO.com panel at Adobe, where we’ll be discussing these findings with brilliant thought leaders from across Europe. To find about more, you can follow the exclusive panel live via #AdobeSummit at 12:00 BST tomorrow, Thursday 30th April 2015.
If you can’t wait until then, here is a quick run down of some of the key findings from the report from my perspective as well as our CMO.com panel experts.
Smartphone browsing is growing faster in Europe
We did notice countries in Europe are seeing a greater share of tablet site visits than the US, but it’s clear that smartphones visits are driving most visits overall
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 findings surprised Martin Meyer-Gossner, CEO of the international management consulting brand The Strategy Web, in Germany:
“Mobile is digital evolution & revolution. Germany behind UK & Nordics in smartphone; last in tablet adoption? Transformation call, Germany!?”
Fred Cavazza, prolific thought leader on digital marketing, mobile and social media and in France, believes enhanced experience on mobile devices have a big part to play:
“Smartphone usages are accelerating faster in Europe than US. As Android phones are getting better (iOS is lower than 25% in France, Android is north of 60%), and users are getting more comfortable with them (browsing and searching)”
Consumption
Most countries experienced similar trends across consumption last year, measured by the amount of time spent on a website. Media & Entertainment received most smartphone share of consumption – we saw a 37% difference between the Best of the Best & the average.
Doug Kessler, co-founder and creative director of Velocity Partners, the London-based B2B content marketing agency thinks that B2C is leading the way and can provide valuable lessons for B2B.
“ It feels like we all have a lot to learn from the media and entertainment folks — the people who live and die by the amount of attention they earn. Clearly, being better at user experience pays dividends. I wouldn’t want to be a laggard in this scenario.”
Fred Cavazza, was quick to add that user experience is still affected heavily by brand and distribution:
“Consumption is narrowing because of fragmentation between different sites and sources (mobile app or otherwise). The economic situation is still tense, which means less money for each brand or distribution”
Stickiness (the percent of traffic that stays and engages with a site)
When we reviewed stickiness, overall European countries are performing better than the US indicating that in an increasingly globalised world, standardising the customer experience is becoming more important.
What was particularly interesting, is that In Europe, around half of website visits lasted more than one page across all countries. UK, Germany and Benelux have improved average stickiness rates versus 2013, but France and Nordics have seen rates fall . The stickiness rate of the ‘best of the best’ companies was up to 50% higher
Jerry Silfwer, founder and digital strategist at Mad Science Digital sums up the online efficiency as starting from within:
“What separates best-of-the-best when it comes to online marketing and communications is that the winners have discovered the power of inbound marketing. They test, they monitor and they iterate on the behaviours of their inbound audience. That’s how they win!”
Don’t forget, you can follow the discussion of this report via #AdobeSummit on Twitter at 12:00 BST tomorrow, Thursday 30th April 2015.