DoubleClick Release: (Not yet online)

The Q2 2004 E-Commerce Site Trend Report from DoubleClick reports that people are agreeing to buy things online more often. And even as the e-commerce conversion rate increased, users spent only the same amount of total time to view sites, spending less and less time on each page. In fact, users created and abandoned still more shopping carts, adding to an increasingly frenetic shopping pace in which e-commerce sites have very little time to connect with a potential buyer.

Key study tidbits:
- Conversion rates increased 14 percent, with almost 5 percent of visits resulting in a purchase.
- Average order values grew 15 percent to $134.
- Visitors increased pages viewed per session by 12 percent, to 11 per session, even as time per session remained about the same.
- Users are much more likely this year to "cart" items than they were last year, even if that means abandoning them without purchasing. Carts were abandoned at a 24 percent higher rate in 2004's second quarter.
- Use of on-site search increased by a quarter, perhaps because more and more commerce sites are implementing useful search functions.