Dive Brief:

• Almost two-thirds (64%) of online shoppers begin their journeys on a marketplace site such as Amazon, eBay, or Etsy, says a survey from PYMNTS.com and Amazon Payments. 
• Nearly half (48%) of the shoppers surveyed last month went directly to the site of a favorite merchant, 40% initiated a search, and 29% began on social media. 
• MarketLive data says that organic search is still the biggest driver of shopping activity, accounting 38.5% of desktop/laptop traffic and 33.3% of smartphone traffic. 

Dive Insight:

A July 2015 survey from PYMNTS.com and Amazon Payments asking shoppers where they begin their search for items they plan to buy reports that marketplace sites have the most pull, with 64% of shoppers, while 48% went directly to a familiar e-commerce site. Search came in third at 40%, seeming to clash with MarketLive’s second-quarter data, which shows that organic search is the largest driver of traffic to U.S. e-commerce sites.

The numbers, however, may not be incompatible. Accounting for up to 40% of traffic depending on the device used, organic search is likely dominant when consumers begin to look for items they buy infrequently. Shoppers’ willingness to search was higher on tablets, desktops and laptops, too, indicating that they take the most direct routes to product research when using a smaller screen.