Ecommerce Conversion Rates — 2016 Benchmarks
In ecommerce, the term “Conversion Rate” usually refers to the ratio between the number of visits to an online store and the number of purchases made in a given period of time.
At the end of the day, ecommerce success comes down to your ability to turn passive shoppers into paying customers. Which is why conversion rate is the metric of all metrics.
For example, if your website received one thousand visits last month and made ten sales, your conversion rate would be 1%.
If you’re currently managing an online store, it’s likely that you immediately compared that 1% metric mentioned above to your own store’s conversion rate. How does it compare? If you don’t know your Conversion Rate you can calculate it here.
When analyzing Compass’ growing dataset of over $13B in ecommerce transactions, we found that the average conversion rate in ecommerce is 1.33%
If you’re operating at a 3.6% conversion rate or higher, you’re among the industry top performers.
When you look at the data in the table below, we can see more interesting patterns:
• Among the highest-performing stores Google Ads perform better than Facebook Ads.
• For the average store, Facebook Ads and Google Ads have similar performance
• Among average stores, the Organic channel (from Google search) is the worst-performing
• For high performers Organic is one of the best converting channels
• Email is, by far, the highest-performing channel for ecommerce, with top stores achieving conversion rates of almost 10%.
* The Average Conversion Rate for your product/market may vary. Click here to access custom benchmarks.
The problem with generalizing conversion rates
Consumers can behave very differently, depending on the type of product they’re buying, who they’re buying from and where they’re located. And all these factors affect conversion rates (at Compass, we benchmark your store based on all aspects that influence key metrics — see more about it below).
People looking to buy a beauty product, for example, will not engage in the same shopping behavior as someone buying an electronic item.
Another aspect that has a big impact in conversion rates is price. Expensive products require a more complex purchasing process than cheaper ones so when you need to visit a website multiple times to make one purchase, that site’s conversion rate will naturally drop. Think about how many websites you visited before buying your car, and how much research you put in to buy a pair of socks.
What is a good Conversion Rate for your store?
You need to compare your business with others that are similar to it in size, business model, location, AOV, and the platform they’re using. All these factors have a big influence in what can be considered a “good conversion rate.”
At Compass, we take all these factors into account when benchmarking your business metrics to give you the best possible view of your data and how to use it so you can better run and improve your store.
Find out what a good conversion rate for your business would be by clicking on the link below. It only takes 2 minutes and it’s free!
