Strong fourth quarter for ecommerce in Ireland

Ecommerce in Ireland saw its revenue grow 45 percent last year. Traffic to ecommerce websites grew by 27 percent and this was largely driven by mobile traffic, which increased by 39 percent. In the last quarter of 2015, the mobile even overtook the desktop as the most popular device for ecommerce traffic.

Marketing agency published its E-commerce Study 2015 [pdf], which contains lots of interesting numbers on the Irish ecommerce industry. It shows that the online revenue at Irish ecommerce websites increased 45 percent last year, while traffic to these sites grew 27 percent.

More transactions, higher order value
The number of transactions increased by 30 percent. According to the study, this could be due to an increasing number of retailers who roll out free delivery and free returns, which results in less obstacles for consumers to buy online. The average order value grew by 10 percent. “One of the factors influencing this growth in spend per transaction is the fact that repeat purchasers spend more, sometimes as much as double what first-time purchasers spend.”

Top performing ecommerce websites
Wolfgang Digital also looked at the top performing ecommerce websites. They got more than 50 percent of traffic from mobile devices and they all embraced Black Friday, enjoying five teams greater revenue growth year on year on Black Friday 2015 than the study average. Some interesting finds regarding these ecommerce players, is that social traffic didn’t make a market direct response impact and that ad blockers had no impact on traffic levels. “This is due to the fact that display advertising, which is the focus of ad blocking software, is a negligible traffic source for all the top performing websites.”

Strong Q4 due to Black Friday
In terms of ecommerce, Ireland had a strong fourth quarter last year, which is mostly due to the big impact Black Friday had. While in 2014, one in four of the study participants had their biggest online take of the year on this day, last year it was one in two who had their best performance of the year on Black Friday. On average, retailers saw 116% revenue growth compared to Black Friday last year.