What is a Good eCommerce Conversion Rate?

If you are interested in business publications and online e-commerce forums, you might have heard the buzzword “conversion rate” dozens of times. You see this term float around in the business world, but have you wondered what it is and how to consider a conversion rate to be “good”?

If you have, it is high time to shed light on what “conversion rate” exactly means and how it works in this ever-changing trade age.

Table Of Contents

• What is the conversion rate?
• How do you calculate your conversion rate?
• What is a good conversion rate for your ecommerce business?
  • Conversion rate by referral channels
  • Conversion rate by industry
  • Conversion rate by product type
  • Conversion rate by device
  • Conversion rate by country
  • Conclusions on E-commerce conversion rate benchmarks
• How to improve your conversion rate?
• Conclusions

What is the conversion rate?

A website’s conversion rate presents how successfully a brand can convert its traffic to revenue, or just merely a process of a potential visitor becoming an actual customer. Your marketing strategies define your actions, which commonly include the following actions:

• Filling in a registration form (contact us form, lead generation form,…)
• Downloading an asset (software trial, Ebook, mobile app,…)
• Signing up to receive special offers
• Buying products
• Calling your business
• Engaging with your online chat
• Upgrading their service

A high conversion rate is an indicator of an effective marketing strategy and web design; however, if a conversion rate is low, it means that a business may be losing out on potential leads and prospective customers.

However, a low conversion rate means there is room for improvement, which will be mentioned in the last part of this article.

How do you calculate your conversion rate?

Calculating the conversion rate is, in fact, fairly easy. All you need to do is divide the number of conversions you get in a specific time frame by the whole number of people that visited your site or landing page and multiply it by 100%. Here is the formula:

Conversion rate = (conversions / total visitors) * 100%

For example, imagine you initiated an email campaign to announce the upcoming launch of your new product to 10,000 customers that have bought from you before. In the first week after the publication, 500 recipients clicked your email to sign up for pre-order. The conversion rate on that email is 500 divided by 10,000 then multiplied by 100%, equals 5%.

In fact, if you set up a tracking program, most online advertising and analytics platforms can actually show you your conversion rate right in their interface.

What is a good conversion rate for your ecommerce business?

According to an article from BigCommerce, average e-commerce conversion rates are 1-2%.

However, they suggest setting a 2%+ conversion rate as the baseline goal for your online store. It is an easy-to-understand thing, as no one wants to limit himself to only 1%, and it’s obvious that most people desire to generate as many conversions from their website as possible.

Conversion rates on e-commerce sites can be widely varied across different sectors. This may be due to the nature of the industry, device, the supply and demand of purchasers, and the value of transactions. For instance, the average mobile conversion rates would usually be different from that of the same website when viewed on desktops.

In fact, it is not worthwhile to compare your e-commerce conversion rate to an overall benchmark that aggregates conversion rates across industries. If you are going to compare your own conversion rate to anyone else’s, you should try to find common conversion rates for your category. In case you are making a new beginning, here are some category-specific benchmarks that are backed by recent research.

Conversion rate by referral channels

Priceonomics Heap, an analytics company, has conducted an anonymized survey on some major tech platforms like Google, Bing, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Youtube, Snapchat, Twitter to find out which advertising campaigns were most effective at driving customer acquisition.

Ultimately, search engines like Google and Bing had the highest customer conversion rate, at around 8%, over 1.5 times higher than that of Facebook. Twitter (0.9%), Snapchat (0.6%) and Youtube (0.5%) have the lowest conversion rates.

Conversion rate by industry

This image below reveals e-commerce conversion rates by industry based on data by IRP Commerce, an independent market research platform.

It can be clearly seen that Arts & Crafts leads the way with 4.01%, while Baby & Child lags behind with 0.71%.

Conversion rate by product type

Recent median data from Compass also presents interesting data giving some additional peek into how conversion rate is distributed in every Product Type. Top 25% benchmarks are great for identifying how the top performers are doing and whether they are managing to build a substantial ahead of the pack.

Conversion rate by device

Statista is a great source giving regularly updated information of the United States benchmarks on conversion segmented by devices and media for large e-commerce brands in the second quarter of 2019.

With an increasing number of shoppers using mobile devices to purchase, it is essential for online store owners to know conversion benchmarks they should be achieved on a smartphone platform.

Statistics above tell that typically m-commerce conversion rates are around half of those on desktop, showing smartphone is more popular as a device for browsing products while the desktop is preferred for transacting.

Conversion rate by country

It’s important to take benchmark conversion rates of individual countries into account. The conversion rate you should expect from a United States market, for example, will be different from that of a France market.

Conclusions on E-commerce conversion rate benchmarks

A “good” conversion rate is a volatile and flexible concept, depending on how and where you realize yourself in this e-commerce world. By using benchmarks, you can get a better understanding of your own performance and goals, as well as shape your optimization strategies.

In reality, they are not totally gold standards to follow, but what’s more, it is always best to approach in different ways, such as combining two or more benchmarks to achieve the best results.

How to improve your conversion rate?

Paying attention to detail never goes amiss, and nothing is too small to be worth checking and improving. Here is a handy 5 strategy checklist that helps you get started and improve your ecommerce conversion rate:

1. Address pain points and highlight solutions

Visitors come to your page to find out something that really interests them or helps them deal with their difficulties. Therefore, be very clear about how your products and services will benefit them, even better, show them why they can’t resist trying your website.

2. Tailor to your ideal customers

This might be clearly seen, but a low conversion rate may be explained by a lack of website appeal. Always keep these questions in mind when designing a website:

• Is the website easy to navigate?
• Does it have a visual wow factor?
• Is the product photography appealing?
• Is the checkout process straightforward?
• Are offers clear enough?

3. Keep everything necessary and immediately visible

When you desire a high conversion rate, you need to keep your visitors’ eyes on important things. Your selling points, attractive offers, and call-to-action buttons should be right there when a visitor lands on your website, with no need for them to scroll to see anything irrelevant.

4. Provide strategic offers, coupons, deals, and contests

Discounts and coupons came in as the highest-ranking tactic for driving loyalty, with 61% of customers saying they use them, reported by Expedia Affiliate Network.

Customers love it when they get offers and coupon codes when they are not expecting it.

Besides, you can provide seasonal or special occasion promotions, such as birthdays, anniversaries, etc. This can also grab customers’ attention and bring conversions

Also, contests are a form of requiring user participation in buying a minimum amount of products to stand a chance to win a product or reward points.

5. Pay attention to referral sources

It is recommended to consider what channels are sending you the most traffic to your landing and sales page.

For example, you get lots of traffic from Facebook, make sure to align styles and other qualities between your landing page and Facebook post to reassure visitors that they’re in the right place.

You can access this blog to learn more effective ways to optimize your conversion rate and boost sales instantly

Conclusions

What is a good conversion rate? One that is better than the rate at which you are converting prospects today. It’s that simple!

There is no magic shortcut, even if you apply any benchmark, it still requires your testing and effort to improve day by day. The more you focus on your user behavior, the higher your conversion rate will soar. It’s all about being in your customers’ shoes, understanding what they really want and delivering it.

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