Understanding the average eCommerce conversion rate is essential for accurately benchmarking the success or failure of your marketing efforts and the design of your store.
Discover the average rate for each industry and learn how to increase your conversion rate.
Conversion rates at the most simple level are successfully completed transactions as compared to sessions.
Simply put, your conversion rate is expressed as a percentage that indicates successful transactions. For example, if every 4 out of 10 sessions resulted in a completed transaction, your conversion rate would be 40%.
Most eCommerce stores track their overall conversion rate. However, some stores also calculate different types of conversion rates to hone in on what’s working and what needs improvements.
Common types of conversion rates to consider are:
Additionally, you can redefine the ‘completed transaction’ variable for specific conversion rates — it doesn’t always need to be a sale. For example, if you want to build your email list, a new subscriber can be a conversion, and you can calculate the conversion rate based on visitors hitting the opt-in form.
We’ll focus on the overall sales conversion rate and give you tips that can help improve all types of conversions. If you’re just starting, focus on the overall rate and calculate other rates as your company grows.
We’ve touched on determining a conversion rate, but let’s explore the exact formula to help you understand how you compare against the average conversion rate for ecommerce.
The result is expressed as a percentage and is a strong reflection of how well your marketing campaigns, store’s design, and store functionality encourage sales.
Additionally, you can change the variables to calculate the specific conversion types mentioned above.
For example, if you were to focus on individual ad conversion rates, you would calculate website visits from specific ad campaigns compared to sales. Ideally, you would also have systems to track visitors from the campaign to understand who made a purchase.
If we look broadly at eCommerce, the average eCommerce conversion rate across all industries in the United States is 2.3%. Yet, on its own, you don’t have enough information to create an accurate benchmark for your own store.
It’s important to see how you compare to those in your same industry, not everyone in eCommerce. You can see how Varos puts your conversion rate against your direct competition so you have.
So let’s break down industry-specific conversion rates to help you establish an accurate benchmark to gauge your eCommerce site's performance. We’ll also examine other factors influencing your conversions, such as region, device, and platform.
The average for your industry may be higher or lower than the overall eCommerce average. Therefore, you need to benchmark conversion rates against your peers to understand how you stack up accurately.
An extensive 2022 report into digital trends analyzed eCommerce conversion rates specific to each industry. The report’s findings establish an industry-specific benchmark to see how you compare.
The average eCommerce conversion rate benchmark for each industry is:
You can see how there’s a significant range when broken down individually. This breakdown also helps you understand the importance of looking at industry-specific conversion rates instead of the overall average.
Conversions in each industry have different motivating factors, price points, and customer journeys.
For example, someone shopping to stock up on groceries is more likely to purchase someone interested in buying a new car. Groceries are a necessity and comparatively a low-cost purchase, while a new truck is a significant decision few people will make online.
Industry-specific rates are the best way to establish a general benchmark for your own conversion rate. However, it’s well worth highlighting there are other factors influencing conversions.
A separate 2022 eCommerce report explored a range of metrics related to conversions. In addition, the report sheds light on how the region and device impact conversion rates.
The report discovered that the average conversion rate by region is:
Similarly, the device introduces even more variance to overall conversions.
The desktop conversion rate for each region is:
The mobile conversion rate for each region is:
The tablet conversion rate for each region is:
These statistics illustrate how someone on a desktop is more likely to make a purchase. The report also highlights the importance of a finely tuned mobile shopping experience.
Don’t focus on one device, be aware of your traffic from other devices as you design and improve your store.
It’s worth reviewing the report to learn more about how the region and device influence your business’ Average Order Value (AOV), another vital statistic to benchmark.
Shopify, WooCommerce, and Squarespace are among the top eCommerce platforms, and you may even develop your in-house. Your chosen platform's overall design and functionality will also affect conversion rates.
It’s no secret that Shopify is one of the most popular platforms — 1.75 million merchants use it. In addition, Shopify conversion rate benchmarks show that the average conversion rate for Shopify stores for all devices is 1.4%.
That may seem low compared to the overall average mentioned above, but remember that industry, device, and region are also involved. A more accurate comparison is considering that the WooCommerce average conversion rate for all devices is 0.3%.
Choosing your platform is important, as is how it’s designed, marketed, and optimized, focusing on conversions at every step.
Referrals from your campaigns, partnerships, and SEO efforts each send different types of visitors to your websites. Some might be ready to buy, others might be just discovering your brand.
For example, the Varos dashboard demonstrates how visitors from Facebook have the highest conversion rate, while TikTok produces the lowest.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the practice of analyzing and improving various aspects of your eCommerce website and marketing campaigns with the ultimate goal of motivating purchases.
CRO improves revenue, but that’s not where the benefits stop. CRO also lowers your customer acquisition costs by maximizing the effectiveness of your existing platform and campaigns. Once optimized, you’ll acquire more customers from your current budget instead of increasing the budget to increase sales.
How does your conversion rate compare to the industry average we explored above? Are you lagging behind or in the middle of the pack? Then, keep reading to learn how to increase your conversion rate to go beyond the average to grow your business.
The customer journey is an individual's entire process, from discovering your company to making a purchase. And the journey doesn’t stop there — it continues as they come back to make more purchases and ideally refer others to your store.
Each of the following tips is ultimately focusing on the customer journey. So let’s briefly discuss the customer journey so you can understand how CRO applies to every step:
Now let’s drill down into specific actions you can take that help to improve the entire customer journey.
User Experience (UX) is a systematic process evaluating every step in the customer journey, from interacting with paid ads to telling others about your business.
One reason why the Shopify conversion rate is often higher than other platforms is because of Shopify’s ongoing emphasis on providing a great UX. In addition, every update is thoroughly tested before it’s deployed.
You don’t need to switch to Shopify. Instead, test your website on various devices and operating systems to identify any areas that create friction.
Friction refers to any step in interacting with your eCommerce site that requires too much effort, is stressful, or is confusing. Some common causes of friction that can harm your conversion rate are:
The list could go on, but you can see how a customer encountering any of these issues might choose to leave rather than keep going. Identify and correct friction areas to create a better UX.
Landing pages are essential for improving your conversion rate. A landing page can be a specifically designed page showcasing a line of products or even the product pages themselves.
Optimizing landing pages primarily helps with awareness, consideration, and conversion but can also help with other steps in the journey.
Everything on landing pages will influence conversions. Therefore, it’s essential to frequently conduct split tests (A/B tests) to make incremental changes and measure the effectiveness of each.
For example, you may think changing the button color will help. Run a split test that sends half of your traffic to the new color and the other half to the old one. Did the change make any difference? If it helps, make the change permanent.
Some important landing page components to test and optimize are:
It’s essential to make one change at a time, run a split test over two weeks or a month, then evaluate the results. Then, make changes that improved conversions permanent, and re-consider those that had no impact or negatively affected conversions.
The awareness stage of the customer journey is all about marketing. You want to convey a simple, compelling message in paid ads, SEO, and referral programs.
Most high-converting messaging is honest and as unbiased as possible. You may get more clicks from sensationalized verbiage, but visitors likely won’t become customers once they reach your store.
Instead, reinforce trust from the beginning with a concise and truthful message. One study found that 88% of customers say authenticity is a motivating factor when purchasing.
It may be worth hiring a copywriter to fine-tune the messaging in your ads to convey the right message in the simplest possible way. Additionally, ensure different campaigns convey the same overall message with varying verbiage and graphics.
Decision-making is an integral part of the buying process for any purchase, but option overload can create friction and make the visitor leave altogether. Cut down on what you initially show the customer and let them explore more options as they shop.
Offering personalized recommendations is a great way to show customers only what they might want. You can personalize recommendations even if all you know about them is where they came from. For example, visitors from a specific ad campaign will want the item in the ad, while visitors from search engines will want the products they looked up.
Creating buying guides is another effective way to help minimize friction. Teach visitors how to evaluate your products to decide on the best option. Avoid pushing the visitor towards the most expensive option; instead, focus on equipping them with information.
Minimal pricing tiers can also help improve decision-making. Some products or services will inherently have pricing tiers based on features, add-ons, or customization options. Only offer a few tiers and make it easy to differentiate between them.
Upselling, down-selling, and cross-selling are technically more applicable to increasing your Average Order Value (AOV) instead of conversions.
However, these practices can still improve conversion rates by keeping customers from leaving by offering them more value or a less expensive product. Each of these is most applicable in the conversion step of the journey.
Each of these practices takes on a different form to either retain a customer or increase their cart size:
Evaluate how these processes can be implemented to increase conversion rates and AOV.
Your conversion rate is not set in stone. If you’re currently below average or in the middle of the pack, focusing on improving the entire customer journey with the above tips can go far in helping attract and convert customers — without spending more on marketing.
The data we explored is based on static studies, but conversion rates constantly change. An entire industry may have a spike or drop in rates due to outside factors. Staying aware of the current conversion rate for your industry helps you continually evaluate your efforts.
Varos offers a specialized platform that tracks your performance alongside real-time data on essential metrics from your competitors, industry, and overall eCommerce.
You can see how our platform continually evaluates your own conversion rate and gives context for the media, low performers, and high performers so you always know where you stack up.
Ready to unlock real-time benchmarking to truly gauge the effectiveness of your efforts? Get started with Varos today for up-to-date benchmarking and performance tracking.
About the Author
Yarden Shaked
Co-founder & CEO at Varos
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Varos allows thousands merchants to upload anonymize marketing data across meta and google and aggregating it to show what the average is across different categories and ad spend
With varos.com, I can see exactly how our performance across channels stacks up against our competitors in our space.
Compare your ad performance to benchmarks of companies just like yours, anonymously.
I would've killed for this tool years ago and now it's here and oh it's free. Amazing.
I've been seeing some content about @Varos_com so we decided to check it out.
One underrated feature of theirs is the Shopify Benchmarking, which is FREE btw.
Literally impossible to access this data anywhere else. Check out what we're seeing at @my_obvi 👇
I'm loving what @Varos_com is doing with providing much more relevant benchmarks for #ecommerce... especially since it shows that we are absolutely DOMINATING @Elumynt on #facebookads!
This is in the Baby and Children vertical.#fbads #ppcchat #retail #dtc
Bottom line: I’m recommending Varos to you all because it’s FREE (for now) and it’s already added a ton of value for myself and my clients.Check it out 👇
I would definitely recommend checking out Varos. With Varos you can easily see how your peers are performing, for free. You get insights into not only TikTok Ads benchmarks, but also similar data for Facebook Ads, Google Ads, and more. #VarosAmbassador
Varos allows thousands merchants to upload anonymize marketing data across meta and google and aggregating it to show what the average is across different categories and ad spend
With varos.com, I can see exactly how our performance across channels stacks up against our competitors in our space.
Compare your ad performance to benchmarks of companies just like yours, anonymously.
I would've killed for this tool years ago and now it's here and oh it's free. Amazing.
I've been seeing some content about @Varos_com so we decided to check it out.
One underrated feature of theirs is the Shopify Benchmarking, which is FREE btw.
Literally impossible to access this data anywhere else. Check out what we're seeing at @my_obvi 👇
I'm loving what @Varos_com is doing with providing much more relevant benchmarks for #ecommerce... especially since it shows that we are absolutely DOMINATING @Elumynt on #facebookads!
This is in the Baby and Children vertical.#fbads #ppcchat #retail #dtc
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