There are thousands of metrics you can use to measure the success of an ecommerce website. However, at the end of the day, it all comes down to conversion rates. If your site is converting, it’s a success. If it’s not, well…something needs to change.
What is a Good Ecommerce Conversion Rate?
Before looking at some benchmark rates for ecommerce conversion rates, let’s make sure we’re on the same page regarding what a conversion rate is.
As Google explains, “[A conversion rate is] the ratio of transactions to sessions, expressed as a percentage. For example, a ratio of one transaction to every ten sessions would be expressed as an Ecommerce Conversion Rate of 10%.”
Trying to establish a baseline conversion rate for a sector as broad as ecommerce is a challenge. And while you should take these numbers with a grain of salt, here’s a look at some of the latest data on average ecommerce conversion rate by industry:
- Sports and Recreation: 1.75 percent
- Arts and Crafts: 3.79 percent
- Baby and Child: 0.99 percent
- Fashion Clothing and Accessories: 2.44 percent
- Food and Drink: 2.37 percent
- Health and Well-Being: 3.62 percent
- Kitchen and Home: 2.48 percent
If you look at the entire ecommerce industry in the United States, you’ll find that the average conversion rate is right around 1.96 percent.
It’s important to note that these are averages. There are plenty of ecommerce sites that achieve 3-5 percent. Some are even able to generate numbers as high as 10 percent. It’s all relative and highly dependent on your industry, quality of traffic, what you’re selling, and certain website factors. But regardless of where you land on this spectrum, you should always be looking for ways to improve.
4 Conversion-Boosting Tips
Want to increase your conversion rates and generate more top-line revenue for your ecommerce business? Here are a few conversion-boosting tips you can leverage in the days and weeks ahead:
- Speed Up Your Site
Yesterday’s internet users were just happy to have access to online shopping. Today’s internet users have high expectations and a need for speed.
According to one study, when load time is increased by two seconds, the bounce rate for a page more than doubles. A separate study by Walmart suggests that conversion rates experience a steep drop off when the load time is greater than one second. In other words, your website needs to be lightning-fast.
Not sure how to speed up your site? Active Web Group, a Long Island ecommerce development company, is known for helping sites become more efficient. Partnering with them may allow you to reduce friction and improve conversion rates.
- Showcase Social Proof
Customers don’t like to feel like they’re on their own. They want to know that other people are making similar purchase decisions and having positive experiences. You can reinforce this by implementing and showcasing social proof throughout your website.
Good options for social proof include customer reviews, client testimonials, ratings, endorsements, case studies, statistics, and white papers.
- Reduce Hesitancy
A hesitant customer is much less likely to convert. And if they do convert, they’re more likely to be dissatisfied with their purchase. Reduce hesitancy by reaffirming a customer and eliminating as many of their doubts as possible.
In addition to utilizing social proof, you can offer guarantees. Free returns, 100 percent satisfaction guarantees, and lifetime warranties are just a few ways you can nudge people to take action.
- Streamline Checkout
Nothing is more frustrating than getting a customer on your website, convincing them to consider your products, and getting them to add items to their virtual cart….only to have them abandon the shopping cart and close out of the website.
Shopping cart abandonment is a conversion killer! Thankfully, there are ways to reduce your abandonment rate and increase conversions. Exit-intent popups work well, as do countdown clocks, personalized messaging, and free shipping.
Another good strategy is to reduce the number of steps it takes for a customer to complete the checkout process. The fewer pages and fields required, the more likely it is that a customer will follow through on their purchase decision.
Improve Your Site Today
There’s no quick fix for a website with a low conversion rate. In most cases, the solution to increasing a suppressed conversion rate is to make a number of small improvements. By shoring up different aspects of your website and marketing funnel, you’ll notice numbers start to lift. You don’t have to do it overnight, but you should begin today.