25.5 Seconds to Sell the Online Buyer

Fireclicks is a web analytics company that compiles data coverin the behavior of online buyers at many online stores as reported by the FireClick analytic service.
The most interesting part of the buyers' behavior is the average page read time of 25.5 seconds.

25.5 Seconds to Sell

25.5 seconds is a very short time for each page to carry out it's purpose, especially if that page is showing the benefits of the product or making the sales offer to the potential buyer.

Site Metrics	This Week
Average Session Length (pages)	7.70
Average Session Duration (min)	4.60
Average Page Display Time (s)	4.80
Average Page Read Time (s)	25.50

This data comes from a website called FireClick. Or in their own words:

"About the Fireclick Index The Fireclick Index was added to Fireclick's comprehensive web analytics solution in 2003. Fireclick users have access to over 30 key metrics across a number of different segments. Our customers use the Fireclick Index on a daily basis to observe industry trends, and get a complete picture of how their online businesses are really performing relative to their peers. The ability to objectively analyze marketing, merchandising, site traffic, and performance metrics in this context is crucial to the success of any web analytics program. The Fireclick Index is compiled from the live statistics of participating Fireclick customers..."

This is facinating for a marketing and advertising person, because it's a snapshot
of consumer behavior at the moment of the successful sale. It's tough to generalize this data to similar situations like landing pages, but what I learn from this data is that my conversion pages better be short. My landing pages will have to be showing the customer the benefits of the product in the headline, in the product picture on the page, in the product benefit bullet points, and in the copy below the picture.

The FireClick site is chock full of data about online buyers in several industry segments. It's certainly worthy of study.