A new benchmark study of ten Dutch e-commerce websites shows that nearly 0.9% of all internet traffic takes place through mobile devices. This is slightly higher than the 0.7% calculated in a recent benchmark survey conducted of 20 websites. Compared with normal visits (visits by computers and laptops for example), visits from mobile devices are significantly shorter, have fewer page views and transactions are done only occasionally. The mobile activity at e-commerce websites is very limited. The following differences surfaced when comparing “normal visits” with requests made through a mobile phone:

• Visit time of mobile visits is 40% lower
• Number of page views of mobile visits is 47% lower
• Conversion of mobile visits is 83% lower

To complete a transaction on a e-commerce website, it’s usually required to enter a significant amount of personal and financial information. It is therefore understandable that the conversion rate from mobile devices is significantly lower. Entering data using a mobile device is simply not as easy as when using a laptop or pc.

The benchmark study shows that the iPhone (58%) and iPod (12%) are the most used mobile devices to visit e-commerce websites. Other operating systems that are frequently used include Windows, SymbianOS, Blackberry and Android.

In the benchmark study Netprofiler has analyzed the Google Analytics statistics from 10 Dutch e-commerce websites. Only visits with devices where the screen width was less than 700 pixels are included in the research. These are almost certainly mobile devices. The visits per operating system are based on the first two months of 2010.