Adobe: Digital excellence 'closely linked' to revenue growth

Marketers in Australia and New Zealand who deliver best practices are pulling further away from their competitors, according to Adobe.

Among the company's key researching findings, they claim that digital excellence can be closely linked to revenue growth and other business success metrics.

The Adobe Digital Index Best of the Best Benchmark for Asia Pacific compares the overall average versus websites in the top 20% on six key performance indicators across six regions: Australia and New Zealand, Southeast Asia, India, South Korea, Hong Kong, China and the United States.

Key performance indicators are smartphone and tablet traffic, stick rate, visits-per-visitor, time spent and conversion rate with the research offering insights into how the best digital marketing organisations are performing relative to the average.

“We are seeing a major gap developing between being average and being in the top 20% of marketers across Australia and New Zealand,” says Tamara Gaffney, Principal Analyst, Adobe Digital Index.

“For conversion rates alone, the ‘best of the best’ websites in industries that sell online deliver nearly double the average conversion rate.

"They are proving that making a commitment to digital excellence can result in a significant increase in revenue.”

Key findings in the Best of the Best Benchmark for Australia & New Zealand (ANZ) include:

· Best websites optimised for smartphone visitors outperform average sites by 6.9%

· Australia and New Zealand, and Southeast Asia, have seen the most overall growth in tablet share; the best of the best sites achieve about 5% more tablet visits than the average.

· Best websites are more engaging with high stick rates of 66% in comparison to average websites that stand at 46%.

· Loyal return visitors for websites are key and difference in return visits for the best of the best websites was 34.9% higher than average websites.

· Time spent on websites which is the best metric for site engagement for best of the best websites increased by 32.1% in 2013 compared to 2012 whilst it was a mere 1.2% increase for average websites.

“There is no such thing as ‘offline’ any more," Gaffney adds. "The data is telling us that delivering seamless experiences across devices and within social media is driving the best performance and leading to superior business performance.

“Across Asia Pacific, those marketers delivering best in class are on par with top marketers around the world. For example, we can see that stick rate is higher across Asia Pacific than in the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany.

"This is a leading indicator of two important elements of website success – optimised marketing acquisition activities and homepage relevance and engagement.

“Finding out where your organisation falls within the tiers of the Benchmark will help identify strengths and weaknesses and can help marketers prioritise areas to focus on.”