Email converts better than search, social combined

E-commerce sites' biggest tool for increasing sales is their email list

While e-commerce sites are rushing to fill the Internet with their social banter and engagement, it's known that, currently, social converts buyers at a much lower rate than search.

A report released Friday by Monetate found that social converted at 0.59%, while search was almost 5X better at 2.59%. 

The real winners are those troves of emails filling up all of our inboxes right now. Converting 4.25%, email deals are converting people to sales eight times better than social.

According to e-commerce optimization company Monetate’s state-of-the-online-sales-union report for the second quarter of 2012, people aren't factoring in mobile and email enough when looking at products head-to-head.

This could mean that more attention should be placed on email, but the report does warn that companies should ignore other areas or bombard their email lists just because it looks like a better return for now. 

When battling through the browser war, many seem so certain that the fight is between Chrome and Internet Explorer (the two biggest desktop browsers on the market) but thanks to the mobile environment's growing strength, Safari is gaining a lot of traction.

“The most interesting part for me is the browser war,” said Monetate’s chief marketing officer, Kurt Heinemann, in the report. “What we’re seeing on the e-commerce side of the fence is that mobile and desktop Safari are actually equal to Explorer.”

Internet Explorer's hold on the browser market continues to drop -- from 49.37% to 37.5% over the course of a year. In contrast, Chrome's market share grew from 10.89% to 17.15%. 

Interestingly, int he evening hours from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. EST, Safari accounts for 30% of Web traffic. That’s the desktop and mobile versions combined together, and much of that traffic is headed toward e-commerce sites.

Social media's traffic contribution to online shopping sites increased 77% in one year, but few users actually buy anything, according to the new report.

Throughout an entire day Monetate’s customers (such as Best Buy, QVC and Comcast), which include 20% of the top 500 internet retailers in the U.S., get 3.3% of their visits from Android phones, up 85% year-over-year, and 5.4% of their visits from iPhones, up 117%.

And while Android users convert to sales almost 30% better than iPhone users, Mac users spent more once they do decide to press "purchase."

The report does find that Apple users do have a higher order value, spending an average of $102.83 versus $88.75 for PC users, and just $84.91 for the Linux users. 

But the users on desktop versus mobile are also different. Android and iPhone users are essentially tied at about $97 and Window Phone users trail a bit at $92.45.