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Specializing in the behavioral analysis of users on a website or an application, Contentsquare has published its Digital Experience Benchmark 2024 report. This annual study provides an overview of the online experience and customer satisfaction, based on on a rich database of 43 billion sessions and 200 billion page views on 3,590 websites. The result is an overview of consumer behavior on the web, and the health of brands and their online platforms.
Web traffic declining in almost every sector
E-commerce players face a challenge: should we continue to invest to attract more visitors to e-commerce sites? At the start of 2024, the question deserves to be asked. Indeed, if traffic remains “an important engine of growth”However, the sector is seeing it decline in almost all areas, while digital spending continues to increase. 55.3% of the sites analyzed by Contentsquare noted a negative evolution – that is to say a drop – in their traffic from one year to the next (see image one).
This declining traffic does not spare many people in the e-commerce world. Almost all sectors are affected. The drop in traffic between 2022 and 2023 is of the order of -3.6% for all industries combined. Services (-9.4%), energy, utilities and construction (-8.3%) and software (-7.8%) are the areas which recorded the largest declines. Only the travel (+1.4%) and consumer goods (+3.5%) sectors managed to do well.
Mobile and paid traffic are gaining ground
Two progressions are striking in the Contentsquare study. The first concerns the use of mobile to browse the web, which largely takes precedence over browsing via a desktop computer. All industries combined, the share of mobile traffic reached almost 70%, and increased by 2.6% in one year. “The desktop, for its part, is in free fall, with total visits recording a drop of 11.5% in one year”, specifies Contentsquare. However, energy, utilities, construction or financial services share mobile and desktop traffic almost equally. Conversely, retail, consumer goods and telecommunications record around 70% mobile traffic.
At the same time, we see that paid traffic is gaining ground, both on mobile and on desktop computers. More than one in three mobile visits (39.6%) comes from paid sources; on desktop, they account for 19.3% of total traffic. While more than two out of three visits are made on mobile, this observation is enough to provoke “a real growing budgetary headache for digital teams”notes Contentsquare.
The increase in spending on paid sources and the drop in traffic caused the cost per visit to soar by +9.4%. Brands are therefore faced with a harsh reality: they must spend more to attract less.
Frustration remains enemy number 1
Last year, we analyzed the main frustration factors for Internet users. “Two sessions out of five (39.6%) led to frustration in 2023, i.e. +3.9% compared to the previous year”, notes Contentsquare. Among the main factors in 2022 were excessively long loading times and rage clicks. This year’s report shows that frustration over both has declined. “Brands now need to address a major new frustration factor: JavaScript errors. » These become the primary reason for Internet users’ frustration when they browse a website.
“These mistakes are not to be taken lightly, as they can block engagement and even conversion. Unfortunately, they are also cumbersome to manage, with digital teams often having to go through each one to sort out those that are major barriers to the experience and those that are more trivial.Contentsquare analysis.
Source : Digital Experience Benchmark 2024
