24 figures you need to know

How many visitors should I have on my website? How many pages are people visiting on garden centre websites? How much time do they spend on garden centre websites? These and many more questions come up frequently. The truth is: there is no right answer to these questions since every website is unique.

The number of visitors doesn’t matter if you’re a local garden centre in Toronto trying to boost footfall. The number of visitors from the Toronto area matters. Not the total number.

But it’s always good to have some guidance so we’ve compiled 24 figures you need to know in regards to your website and online marketing. 

 

Benchmark of 30 Dutch garden centres

Early 2020, we made an overview of the 2019 figures of 30 Dutch garden centres to be able to give you some guidance. We’ve split these centres into three groups:

• 10 large garden centres (green figures). 

• 10 medium garden centres (purple figures). 

• 10 small garden centres (orange figures). 

In other words, we tried to create a benchmark which is representative for centres across the world, not just Dutch garden centres. Things will be slightly different in other countries but it certainly gives some guidance. 

All data comes from Google Analytics this means you can log in on your own account to compare your own numbers to our results. 

Every Garden Connect website has a Google Analytics code integrated so don’t hesitate to contact our support if you have accidentally locked yourself out of your own account. Believe us, that happens frequently!

 

Number of visitors per month

The average number of visitors per month on a large centre website is 21,000 unique visitors. This peaks during the Spring to around 50,000 and decreases during Summer & Winter. Mid-size centres sit around 5,300 per month and small centres see about 1,900 visitors on their site per month. 

A lot of garden centres ask us about their number of visitors and if they have “the right figure”. There’s no right figure or correct number you should have. 

It is only important to have relevant visitors on your website.

Secondly, the trend is more important than the number. We always explain having a growing number of visitors matters more than the actual number. 

And in case you might think 21,000 visitors a month is a bit low for a large centre, keep in mind this is just an average. Our largest customer has around 180,000 per month with a peak of over 300,000 during the spring.

Time on website

The time visitors spend is important since it tells you something about the relevance of your website. If visitors spend a long time on your website, it’s apparently interesting to read. 

On large websites, visitors spent an average of 1:51 per visit, medium websites see an average of 1:28 and small sites are only short behind that figure with 1:20. 

Most large garden centres have some sort of webshop That could explain the difference between small, medium and large websites. 

Tip: check the time spent on your own Google Analytics account and compare desktop vs. mobile. Having a very low time spent on mobile might be caused by usability problems. 

 

Organic growth

Speaking about the trend, we were wondering if garden centres were able to get more traffic via organic (free) search results on Google, so we checked the 2019 and 2018 totals. 

Larger centres saw an increase of 16%, medium centres of 32% and small centres of 39%. 

That’s odd since you might think large centres grow quickly online.

These numbers, however, are relative. It’s harder to grow 39% if you already have a lot of visitors on your website. Among our customer base, smaller centres have started investing in their online marketing and are closing the gap. They needed a bit more time to implement online marketing in their centre but now they have, they are making huge steps forward. Relatively. 

Do you have a small centre or a retail nursery and has the number of visitors in 2019 grown less than 39% compared to 2018? Then you’re losing some marketing share and it might be time to take some action.

Visitors per device

The previous stats showed a clear difference between larger, medium and smaller garden centres. The differences disappear once we look at the devices visitors use. 

For example, on medium and small websites 15% of the visitors use a tablet while 16% of the larger websites are visited via a tablet.

For mobile, large and medium websites are both on 56% while smaller centres are on 49%. The figures for desktop reflect this: smaller centres are getting 35% visitors while larger sites see 29% and medium sites 28%. 

 

Newsletter open rates

The last figure a lot of customers ask us about is the average open rate of newsletters. 

The open rate always depends on the quality of your email list, but the large centres are around 38% open rate. Medium-sized centres are doing the best job with 45% and small centres are on 39%. 

So on average, you should be around 40%. If your open rate is lower than 40% it’s time to have a good look at your e-mail marketing. If it’s higher, you’re doing a great job! 

These 24 figures will give you some guidance and will make it possible to benchmark your own website. Again, all figures are from Google Analytics (and the open rate from our own newsletter system), so you can easily look up these figures yourself to compare them.

Feel free to contact us if you’re struggling to make a benchmark or if you want to improve your numbers. Give us a ring on +44 203 475 5541, +31 20 700 8250 or e-mail edwin@gardenconnect.com.