iPerceptions : web analytics, attitudinal predictive customer feedback
Turn Up The Silence
Nov 17

Browser Wars: Internet Explorer Doing Well On Retail & E-Commerce Sites

GetClicky, which is one of the most reliable sources of this kind of information, currently has Internet Explorer running at an average daily market share of about 58% for the first thirteen days of November, with Firefox running at a market share of about 32% over the same time period.

We ran our own numbers, looking at browser market share for a panel of 50,000 respondents, culled from 4Q surveys running on retail & e-commerce websites.

As the graphic below shows, we found a much higher penetration for Internet Explorer in the retail & e-commerce vertical, at least relative to the normative data from GetClicky. For this vertical, Firefox is running at only 56% of its web-wide penetration.

Browsers1.jpg

In addition, if we break out visitor intent for both of these browsers, even more interesting data bubbles to the surface. Internet Explorer has even higher penetration among visitors with a distinct intent to buy (78%) and visitors onsite to hunt for bargains and promotions (77%). Firefox, by contrast, has a higher market share among support seekers (20%).

Browsers2.jpg

While we don’t yet have a firm theory yet on what lurking variable(s) is (are) causing Internet Explorer to have such high penetration on retail/e-commerce sites generally and among buyers specifically, we think demography clearly plays a role.

A Firefox vs. Internet Explorer analysis released by comScore last year certainly suggest that the Firefox user is cut from a different cloth than the Internet Explorer use—a cloth that, on the surface, would appear to lend itself well to a predisposition for online shopping. Firefox users are significantly more likely to have yearly incomes of over $75,000 (51%, vs. 39% for IE).

But the collective youth of the Firefox cohort (22% between the ages of 18 and 24, according to the comScore data) might be mitigating FF’s penetration in the retail & e-commerce vertical. Indeed, the Online Shopping portion of the Pew Internet & American Life Project indicates that the 30 to 49 age bucket (46%) that composes the bulk of online purchasers. That’s the sweet spot that Microsoft is hitting harder than Mozilla.

We’ll run the experiment with real data from 4Q surveys next quarter to see if the browser trends hold up.

Michael Whitehouse
November 17, 2008
Email Us |  Print this Entry
Post a Comment




Comments

You should examine the time of visit. A awful lot of people visit sites during the day on weekdays, i.e. from their office where IE still dominates.

Jacques Warren
November 18, 2008

It is amazing to see results like this.

One site I'm involved in has not had more than 50% IE penetration since Safari became available for Windows.

Considering that FF3 has very clear graphics for secure shopping and IE7 has an activation aspect to start with, the actual user base is interesting.

Looking forward to see the next batch of results.

Tim
November 19, 2008

Guys,

Thanks so much for the comments. Jacques, that's a great point. People are indeed often locked into IE as the browser of choice at the office.

I ran a report on time of visit and found that about 75% of our completed surveys occurred on weekdays, of which 48% occurred during the 9 to 5 window (I know that working hours are more flexible now, but it's still a useful rubric to operate under). So, that means that about 36% of our total completed surveys occurred between Monday 9am and Friday 5pm. Luckily, it's not that heavy a bias!

Thanks!

Michael

Michael Whitehouse
November 24, 2008