# Session Depth and Cart Signals Across Top German E-Commerce Sites — 2025–2026

> OTTO and MediaMarkt record ~12% cart-signal rates — six times higher than idealo and CHECK24, whose long sessions reflect research rather than direct checkout

**Period:** Jan 2025 – Mar 2026  
**Market:** DE  
**Data status:** final  
**Data as of:** 2026-04-30T04:12:20.365562+00:00  
**Sample size:** n = 11,809  
**Source:** [https://www.datapods.app/en/insights/digital/web-browsing/ecommerce-session-depth-cart-signals-germany-2025-2026](https://www.datapods.app/en/insights/digital/web-browsing/ecommerce-session-depth-cart-signals-germany-2025-2026)

## Segments

- **Years:** 2025–2026
- **Platform:** browsing

## Summary

A cart or checkout URL appeared in roughly 12% of OTTO and MediaMarkt browsing sessions in Germany between January 2025 and March 2026 — a share six times higher than on idealo, Apple, or CHECK24, where the figure drops below 2%. The contrast reveals two fundamentally different roles a shopping site can play: transaction hub versus research destination.

## Why price-comparison sites show near-zero cart signals

Platforms like idealo and CHECK24 are designed to redirect purchase intent off-site to the cheapest retailer — they capture the decision, not the transaction. Germany's price-conscious consumers rely heavily on these tools: idealo alone receives tens of millions of monthly visits and enjoys high user loyalty. The median session on Lidl.de runs to ~99 seconds — the longest in the top 10 — suggesting deep engagement with weekly specials and the Lidl Plus loyalty offer, even as the platform's raw web reach declined in early 2026 (see the [monthly share trend](slug:top-10-ecommerce-monthly-browser-share-germany-2024-2026)). Temu and AliExpress show the shortest median sessions (14s and ~20s respectively), consistent with feed-style discovery browsing that converts on repeat visits rather than single long sessions. For advertisers, the session-depth gap is a proxy for funnel position: high cart-signal rates indicate lower-funnel inventory, while comparison and feed-style sites offer upper-funnel reach at scale.

## Chart

Scatter plot with median session duration in seconds on the x-axis and share of sessions containing a cart or checkout URL signal on the y-axis, for the top 10 German e-commerce brands over January 2025 to March 2026. OTTO and MediaMarkt cluster at ~12% cart-signal rate with 50–70s sessions. Lidl and CHECK24 show the longest sessions (~95s) but low cart signals. Temu and AliExpress appear bottom-left with short sessions and near-zero cart signals.

## Methodology

Each data point represents one of the top 10 German e-commerce brands. A session is defined as a unique combination of user and session identifier on the brand's domains. Sessions with zero recorded dwell time or longer than two hours were excluded. A cart signal is any session containing a URL path matching shopping-cart, basket, Warenkorb, checkout, wishlist, or Merkzettel terms. Median session duration in seconds is shown on the x-axis; the share of sessions with at least one cart-signal URL is on the y-axis. The observation window covers January 2025 through March 2026.

## Citation

Datapods (2026-04-30). *Session Depth and Cart Signals Across Top German E-Commerce Sites — 2025–2026*. Datapods Insights. https://www.datapods.app/en/insights/digital/web-browsing/ecommerce-session-depth-cart-signals-germany-2025-2026

## About Datapods

Datapods is a behavioral consumer-data platform. The Insights library publishes free, citable statistics derived from a panel of 25,000+ opted-in participants in Germany: observed real behavior (transactions, browsing, media), not surveys. All data is processed within the EU and is GDPR-compliant.

For brand-specific cuts, competitor benchmarks, and granular audience filters across 12,000+ tracked brands, see [https://www.datapods.app/en](https://www.datapods.app/en).