More Transactions, on Smaller Orders

During the most recent holiday season, consumers who clicked on search ads, like those accompanying Google results, performed 87 percent more transactions with online retailers than they had a year before. But the average online shopping basket was 10 percent smaller, according to Skai, a maker of search-engine marketing software that analyzed three million transactions with its clients, generally large online retailers. In other words, people are spreading their money thinner online.