Ecom­merce sites only have sec­onds to cap­ture and engage their con­sumers and help move them down the con­ver­sion path. A new study from Mon­e­tate gives clues into what shop­pers are doing on an ecom­merce site in the span of one hour, when 75 per­cent of all pur­chas­es occur.

Every minute counts on your ecom­merce site to move your con­sumer to the check­out. In fact, you’ve already lost 30 per­cent of your vis­i­tors after they’ve only been on your site for less than 60 sec­onds. This accord­ing to new find­ings released by Mon­e­tate in its “EQ3: Gone in 60 Min­utes Report.”

The study found that near­ly 75 per­cent of all ecom­merce pur­chas­es were made with­in an hour, and each seg­ment of time spent on the site rep­re­sent­ed a set of com­mon behav­iors.

What Happens In 1 Hour On An Ecommerce Site

In the first minute, 77 per­cent are in prod­uct dis­cov­ery mode; 19 per­cent are look­ing at prod­uct detail pages, and only 4 per­cent ever put an item in the cart.

In the first 15 min­utes, 66 per­cent are still in prod­uct dis­cov­ery, 27 per­cent have moved to prod­uct detail pages, and 8 per­cent have added an item to the cart. How­ev­er, only 0.22 per­cent have pur­chased at this time.

The fol­low­ing 30 min­utes show a “dwin­dling num­ber of vis­i­tors,” accord­ing to the report:

By the time minute 16 in a ses­sion has rolled around, one of three things has occurred: your vis­i­tor left your site, your vis­i­tor made a pur­chase, or your vis­i­tor is a ded­i­cat­ed brows­er. The bad news is that the first of those three is the most fre­quent. The good news is that those who are left at the 30-minute mark con­vert into cus­tomers at a high­er rate. Inter­est­ing­ly, more vis­i­tors are pur­chas­ing rel­a­tive to the gen­er­al vis­i­tor pop­u­la­tion dur­ing this time­frame than at any oth­er time win­dow.

Mon­e­tate reports that by the 45-minute mark, 68 per­cent of pur­chas­es have been made. The last 15 min­utes of the hour gar­ners only 6 per­cent of con­ver­sions.

Dig­ging a lit­tle deep­er into the data, how­ev­er, Mon­e­tate reports:

• The most pop­u­lar time for a pur­chase, mea­sured by vol­ume, was between the fifth and eighth min­utes of a consumer’s ses­sion.
• Pur­chase activ­i­ty peaked rel­a­tive to traf­fic dur­ing min­utes 35 through 50. After 61 min­utes, all met­rics expe­ri­enced a steady decline.

3 Tips For Engaging Consumers During Their Shopping Journey

In its report, Mon­e­tate gives take­aways for brands to bet­ter con­nect with con­sumers as they move along their shop­ping jour­ney.

• Make sure vis­i­tors com­ing to your site aren’t con­fused about where to turn when they land. “Mes­sage-to-site con­sis­ten­cy means using the same mes­sages and prod­ucts that got some­one to click your CPC ad or email CTA on your web­site,” the report states.
• Remind shop­pers who have aban­doned their carts to come back to com­plete their pur­chase. “Use retar­get­ing tac­tics, such as dis­play ads and trig­gered emails, to dri­ve those indi­vid­u­als back to the site. If you dive into your site ana­lyt­ics, you’ll know how many days you have to make an impact this way. And you can always exper­i­ment with alter­nate values—free ship­ping, free returns, loy­al­ty club points—to see what res­onates with your close-to-con­vert­ed cus­tomers,” says the report.
• Opti­mize the check­out process. “The key, of course, is keep­ing your vis­i­tor focused on the task at hand,” the report states. “That might mean hid­ing nav­i­ga­tion bars, remov­ing prod­uct rec­om­men­da­tions and social shar­ing but­tons, adding a thumb­nail of the prod­ucts being pur­chased.”

You have mere­ly 60 sec­onds to make an impres­sion on your ecom­merce site, and 60 min­utes to con­vert that shop­per into a cus­tomer.

How will you improve your shop­ping jour­ney in 2015?