Digital Commerce Increased 22 Percent In Second Quarter

Digital commerce increased 22 percent in the second quarter, surpassing industry expectations, according to Demandware, the Salesforce company.

In a report, Demandware said shopping attraction, which measures visits to retail websites, grew 24 percent in the quarter, outpacing the overall rate of digital growth for the three-month period.

“This highlights a fundamental shift that retailers now deal with — shoppers are making more visits and doing so across multiple devices,” said Demandware in the report. “We set out to quantify this new reality of omnichannel shopping by measuring which visitors are looking to buy and which visitors are just browsing. We call this new metric Buying Intent.”

Demandware found 16 percent of shoppers show real buying intent in digital. Notably, mobile shoppers continue to send real buying signals, with buying intent increasing 8 percent on phones. That is the highest of any device, Demandware said.

What’s more, the survey found digital shoppers prefer their mobile phones over tablets. The report found shoppers placed more than double the number of orders on their mobile phones than they did on their tablets. Phones also took order share from computers. Good news for consumers: Demandware found more orders are shipping for free with the eCommerce tax becoming a distant memory. While discounts are a driving factor in shoppers’ purchasing habits, it’s also hurting retailers, with Demandware finding retailers lost margin ground, with the discount rate rising a full percentage point compared to last year.

Social media is also playing a role in shopping online. The report found social media is becoming a larger driver of traffic to retail sites, representing 2.7 percent of all digital traffic, up 55 percent compared to a year ago. It’s also driving 1 percent of orders. On the mobile front, social media drives close to 4 percent of the traffic. Demandware analyzed the activity of more than 400 million shoppers worldwide to come up with the data.