[Last Updated November 2nd, 2017]

Over the years, I’ve had a bunch of reasons to look up web design and marketing statistics.

Whether it was industry stats for investor pitches, browsing stats for usability, or SEO stats for content marketing, I’ve spent WAY too many hours combing through blog posts and studies to find what I was looking for.

So now, I’m bringing all of the stats that I can find under one roof and I’ll be updating this post periodically with new stats.

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This list should help you:

• Give supporting statistics to show small business web design prospects
• Design better pages and websites
• Benchmark conversion rates
• Make decisions about your content strategy
• Make decisions about your social media strategy
• Make decisions about your email marketing strategy

Notes:

• I tried to get the most recent stats available
• I excluded MOST industry investment and spending stats, choosing more actionable stats over investor pitch-centric stats

Industry Statistics

Financial

• $26 Billion: Web Design Industry Size [source]
• 226,850: Web Designers [source]
• 150,428: Businesses [source]
• Employees/Business: 1.5 [source]

Mobile Browsing

• 40% of mobile searches have local intent [source]
• 51% of internet usage is through mobile phones [source]
• 55% of email opens are now happening on mobile devices [source]
• 2.42: average number of devices being used simultaneously [source]

Small Business Adoption

• 54% have a website [source]
• 24% plan to build a website in the near future [source] – different source pegs this at 55% [source]
• Reasons small businesses don’t have websites [source]
  • 35% business is too small
  • 32% website is not relevant to industry [additional source]
  • 20% cost – different study pegs this at 30% [additional source]
  • 21% lack technical expertise
• 68% with a website have a mobile-friendly site [source]
• 59% of small business say website grew once they had built their website [source]
• 83% of owners with a business website say website is competitive advantage [source]
• 91% of customers have visited a store because of an online experience [source]
• 37% of people use the Internet to find a store at least once per month [source]

Design Statistics

UX

• Bounce rate: 15% drop for Time.com when they implemented infinite scroll [source]
• Credibility: Judgments on website credibility are 75% based on a website’s overall aesthetics [source]
• First Impressions: 94% of first impressions are design-related [source]
• Home Page: what people want to see on the homepage [source]
  • 86%: Products and services
  • 64%: Contact info
  • 52%: Company info
  • 27%: Testimonials
  • 2%: Pricing
• Email Capture: what people will give out their email for [source]
  • 62%: Trial offers
  • 48%: Product demos
  • 44%: Product evaluations
  • 41%: Research
  • 40%: Datasheets
  • 34%: Webinars
  • 24%: Case studies
  • 23%: Newsletters
• Subscribe information: what information people prefer not to include in subscribe forms [source]
  • 58%: Phone number
  • 53%: Address information
  • 21%: Role/Title
  • 20%: Last Name
  • 18%: Company
  • 16%: Email
  • 11%: First Name
• Bounce reasons: what causes people to leave a website to perform research? [source]
  • 87%: Evaluate competitors
  • 57%: Read reviews
  • 32%: Find personal references
  • 25%: See the company’s social media

Conversion

• 13.28% average B2B landing page conversion rate [source]
• 9.87% average B2C landing page conversion rate [source]
• Site speed: 74% increase in conversion rate by decreasing site speed from 8 to 2 seconds [source]
• Videos can increase conversion rate up to 80% [source]
• Conversion rate average by CTA location [source]
  • Sidebar: 0.5-1.5%
  • Generic end-of-post: 0.5-1.5%
  • Popups: 1-8%
  • Sliders and bars: 1-5%
  • Welcome gates: 10-25%
  • Featurebox: 3-9%

Page Speed Statistics

• Averages [source]
  • Average load time: 5 seconds
  • Average page size: 3Mb
  • Average number of images: 42
  • Average number of JavaScripts: 21
  • Average number of http requests: 89
• How to compare [source]
  • if your site loads in 5 seconds it is faster than approximately 25% of the web
  • if your site loads in 2.9 seconds it is faster than approximately 50% of the web
  • if your site loads in 1.7 seconds it is faster than approximately 75% of the web
  • if your site loads in 0.8 seconds it is faster than approximately 94% of the web

SEO Statistics

Overall

• Search drives 41% of external traffic (as compared to social media, email, etc.) [source]

Search Results

• Click through rate for search results by position [source]
  • 1: 26%
  • 2: 16%
  • 3: 10%
  • 4: 7%
  • 5: 5%
  • 6: 3.5%
  • 7: 2.6%
  • 8: 2%
  • 9: 1.5%
  • 10: 1.2%
• 2,416 words: average word count of a top 10 ranked post [source]

Content

• 85% of content less than 1,000 words [source]
• 2.5% of content has over 3,000 words [source]

Links

• 0: median inbound links per post [source]
• 0.75: average inbound links per post [source]
• 2: median inbound links for 1,000-2,000 word posts [source]
• 3: median inbound links for 2,000-3,000 word posts [source]
• 3: median inbound links for 3,000-10,000+ word posts [source]
• External links improve ranking, though exact correlation is hard to pin down [source]

Content Statistics

• 25% of consumers value entertaining content over accurate content [source]
• Time constrained users prefer skimming articles on trends (59%) to reading a long article on one issue (41%) [source]
• The median time people spend reading an article is 37 seconds [source]
• Trust – relative trustworthiness of content by source [source]
  • 72% friend or family
  • 59% work colleague
  • 55% traditional broadcast media
  • 54% company who you buy from
  • 54% traditional newspaper
  • 45% business leader
  • 39% government official
  • 36% professional blogger
  • 29% company who you don’t buy from
• Top channels used by B2B buyers to share business-related content: [source]
  • 97%: Email
  • 85%: LinkedIn
  • 62%: Twitter
  • 38%: Facebook
  • 33%: Slideshare
  • 20%: Google+
• Content type preferences: [source]
  • 90%: Prescriptive content (e.g. “7 steps to…”)
  • 88%: Predictive content (blueprints, toolkits)
  • 83%: Foundational content (executive Q&A)
  • 81%: Benchmarking tools (e.g. “Future of…”)
  • 80%: Conversational content (calculators)
• Content improvement recommendations: [source]
  • 96%: Add more insight from industry thought leaders
  • 95%: Provide more benchmarking data
  • 94%: Make content easier to access (e.g. shorter forms)
  • 94%: Use more data and research to support content
  • 93%: Curb sales messages
  • 93%: Package related content together
  • 92%: Focus less on product specifics and more on value
  • 86%: Don’t overload content with copy
  • 85%: Create shorter content
• Most valuable content viewed during decision-making process [source]
  • 77%: 3rd party reports
  • 72%: Case studies
  • 69%: White papers
  • 62%: Webinars
  • 54%: eBooks
  • 45%: Video
  • 12%: Podcasts
• Content types used to make decisions in the past 12 months [source]
  • 82%: White papers
  • 78%: Webinars
  • 73%: Case studies
  • 67%: eBooks
  • 66%: Infographics
  • 66%: Blog posts
  • 62%: 3rd party reports
  • 47%: Video
  • 12%: Podcasts
• Pieces of content consumed prior to engaging with sales [source]
  • 21%: 1-3
  • 47%: 3-5
  • 17%: 5-6
  • 16%: 7+
• Time spent to write a blog post [source]
  • 13%: Less than 1 hour
  • 34%: 1-2 hours
  • 23%: 2-3 hours
  • 12%: 3-4 hours
  • 9%: 4-6 hours
  • 6%: 6+ hours
• Content publishing frequency [source]
  • 4%: More than daily
  • 6%: Daily
  • 24%: 2-6 posts/week
  • 21%: Weekly
  • 18%: Several per month
  • 9%: Monthly
  • 5%: Less than monthly
  • 15%: Irregularly
• Percentage of posts that are guest posts [source]
  • 35%: none
  • 36%: less than 5%
  • 15%: 5-25%
  • 11%: 25-50%
  • 7%: 50-75%
  • 6%: 75-100%

Email Marketing Statistics

• Top reasons for unsubscribe [source]
  • 69%: too many emails
  • 56%: content no longer relevant
• Employees spend 13 of their working hours each week in their email inbox (on average) [source]
• 68% of Americans say they base their decision to open an email on the ‘From’ name [source]
• 92% of online adults use email [source]
• Email subscribers are 3X more likely to share your content via social media [source]
• 28% increase in conversion rate by including CTA button rather than text link [source]
• Emails are 5X more likely to be seen than Facebook posts [source]
• 4.24% of visitors from email marketing buy something [source]
• Emails with a single CTA increased clicks 371% and sales 1617% [source]

eCommerce Statistics

Industry

• $83.9 Billion: B2C ecommerce sales [source]
• 38.7% increase in mobile commerce sales in 2015 [source]
• 55% of internet users in the U.S. redeem mobile coupons from social networks [source]
• 66% want to buy during sales [source]
• 63% want specials to be offered [source]

Cart Abandonment

• 97% shopping cart abandonment rate on mobile [source]
• 72% shopping cart abandonment rate on desktop [source]
• 25% abandon carts because website was difficult to navigate [source]
• 36% abandon carts because they found a better price elsewhere [source]
• 32% abandon because price is too expensive [source]
• 13% abandon because price is in foreign currency [source]
• 56% abandon because of added costs during checkout [source]
• 37% are just browsing and not ready to purchase [source]

Shipping

• 44% won’t buy if shipping cost is too high [source]
• 22% won’t buy if shipping cost is stated too late [source]
• 6% won’t buy if slow shipping is offered [source]
• 73% want free shipping [source]

Return Policy

• 61% of shoppers won’t buy if you have a bad return policy [source]
• 357% spending increase if you offer free returns [source]
• 36% want price match guarantee [source]

Mobile vs. Desktop

More and more eCommerce interaction is mobile, but conversions are still better on desktop [source]

• Average conversion rate: 2.06% Desktop – 0.55% Mobile
• Average revenue per visit: $4.11 Desktop – $0.87 Mobile
• CTR paid search: 2.1% Desktop – 2.7% Mobile
• CPM: 10.4% Desktop – 12.4% Mobile
• Ad spending: 51% Desktop – 49% Mobile

Social Media Statistics

• 8: median number of shares/post [source]
• 2% of your Facebook fans see your posts in their News Feed [source]
• Referral traffic to corporate websites by social media platform [source]
  • LinkedIn 64%
  • Facebook 17%
  • Twitter 14%
  • Flickr 0.2%
  • Youtube 0.1%
  • Google+ 0.1%
  • SlideShare 0.1%
  • Other 4%
• Facebook [source]
  • Post at 3pm to get the more clicks
  • Post at 1pm to get the most shares
  • Sat/Sun have highest engagement
• Twitter [source]
  • Post at 5-6pm
  • Wednesdays are best
• Pinterest [source]
  • Post at 8-11pm
  • Sat/Sun are best
• LinkedIn [source]
  • Post at 5-6pm
  • Tues-Thurs are best
• Google+ [source]
  • Post 9-11am
  • Wednesdays are best
  • Interaction in general on Google+ is low

Advertising Statistics

• 2.70%: average conversion rate for search ads [source]
• 0.89%: average conversion rate for display ads [source]
• 11.45%: conversion rate of top 10% of advertisers [source]

Conclusion

Phew! That’s a lot of web design and marketing statistics.

If you have some stats you want to add to this list, please leave them in the comments below!