The quadrant is enough for us to shop. But e-shopping

Exactly 15 minutes and 44 seconds - that's how long it takes on average for a visit to an e-commerce store on the Shoper platform to end in a purchase. The company analyzed data from several thousand of its customers on how long shoppers spend in their stores. It is affected by both their gender and age. However, it is most prolonged by the decision to go "to the checkout," although everything takes much less time online than in traditional stores anyway.

According to this year's Gemius "E-commerce in Poland" survey, along with 24-hour availability and low prices, time is the most frequently cited factor driving people to shop online. 71 percent of respondents believe they take less time than in traditional stores. The opposite view is held by 14 percent of respondents. And since the majority is not necessarily right, Shoper decided to check how much time we spend visiting online stores. The platform also decided to check whether online shopping takes more time for women or men, and which generation buys faster.

Window shopping on the web

In Poland, we do not have an accurate report analyzing the time spent shopping. However, we know from the Payback Opinion Poll published in spring 2018 that for 60 percent of respondents a single shopping trip takes up to an hour, and for 30 percent it is two hours. In contrast, the US Time Use Instituce calculated that a shopping visit in the US takes an average of 43 minutes. In this context, an average visit to an online store seems instant. Shopper's data shows that it lasts only 2 minutes and 30 seconds on average.

- It's worth remembering that this result applies to all hits on store pages, not just those that end in a purchase transaction. This means that mainly window shopping in the online version is included here. Many people get to a store through a search engine and just want to look at pictures, check the price of a product or its parameters," notes Lukasz Kozlowski, Customer Success Manager of Shopera, "This is an important tip for retailers to design their stores in such a way that their advantages and advantages are visible as soon as they enter the site. They have only two minutes with a small wrap to convince a potential customer, he adds.

The analysis shows little difference by age and gender of shoppers. Men up to the age of 24 spend the least amount of time in e-stores - that's an average of 2 minutes and 22 seconds. In each subsequent age bracket, the time increases by a few seconds. In contrast, the opposite is true for women. Women in the youngest age group enter e-stores for an average of 2 minutes and 38 seconds, while their older female colleagues, mothers and grandmothers finish their visit a few seconds faster.

The weekly distribution of visit lengths is also interesting. Each age group spends an average of 10-15 seconds less in e-commerce on weekends than on weekdays, Monday through Friday.

Are men quicker to decide?

Shopper's data shows that the time of a visit to an online store increases when one decides to make a purchase there. For visits that end in a transaction, it is more than 6 times longer than the average, averaging 15 minutes and 44 seconds.

- One can risk the thesis that if a user spends more than a few minutes in our store, he or she is really seriously interested in making a purchase. It is worth identifying such people on an ongoing basis and forging iron while hot, e.g. by displaying them a pop up with an additional incentive using a retargeting application," suggests Łukasz Kozłowski of Shopera, adding that it should not be a reminder, but a message with a real benefit. - Internet users buy consciously. They read product descriptions, compare similar models and prices in other stores. This longer time also consists of choosing a delivery method or payment method. Sellers should not so much shorten this procedure as simplify it, so that buyers do not get distracted along the way. The conclusions of the analysis we did at Shoper coincide with research conducted by analysts from Google. These studies show that the decision to buy is often made quite a lot before entering a store (whether online or traditional). In the store itself, only the execution of this decision takes place. - notes Shopera's expert.

Men aged 35-44 are the fastest at shopping. Their average visit that ends with the purchase of products takes 13 minutes and 46 seconds. The longest shopping time (19 minutes 32 seconds) was recorded in the group of men over 65. For women, the statistic has a very similar distribution, although for almost every age group the average visit time is tens of seconds longer than for men (for example, for shopping ladies aged 25-34 it is 15 minutes and 23 seconds, and 14 minutes and 34 seconds for men).

The data on which the analysis is based covers the period from January to October 2018, and includes all of the several thousand stores operating in the SaaS model on the Shoper platform.