Average ecommerce conversion rate benchmarks
As an ecommerce business owner, you know that your conversion rates are everything. But ecommerce conversion rates vary wildly across different industries, businesses, and product niches. Even if you’re tracking your ecommerce conversion rates closely, you might wonder whether you’re in line with industry standards, if you’re above average, or if you’re below the acceptable threshold.
Without some conversion rate benchmarks, you won’t know where you stand or how to improve. This lack of insight can decrease your ranks among top competitors and hurt your ability to be in the top 10th percentile of performers.
By understanding industry standards, you can compare your conversion rates and find a starting point to optimize your business going forward. Ultimately, learning average industry conversion rates will help you determine if you’re doing well for your industry, so you know what to do to rank better than the competition.
Check out this guide to see what the average ecommerce conversion rates are by industry, as well as some quick tips to increase your conversion rates.
This post will explain:
- The purpose of the average conversion rate
- Overview of what the average conversion rate is
- Average rates for ecommerce websites
- Average rates by device
- Average rates by industry
- Average rates by region or country
- Average rates by channel
- How an ecommerce conversion rate is measured
- Quick conversion rate optimization tips
- Opportunities to increase your conversion rates
What’s the purpose of the average conversion rate?
In ecommerce, the average conversion rate is a percentage that measures how effective your site is at persuading users to take a desired action. That might be downloading content, signing up for your email list, or even buying a product.
Businesses track their average conversion rates to see how compelling their offers are to their audience. After all, if just 1 out of every 100 people takes you up on your offer, that might be a sign your target audience doesn’t like the offer, isn’t ready to buy, or something else entirely.
You can measure your ecommerce conversion rate with this formula:
For example, if you received 200 orders in a month and 2,000 people visited your website, your conversion rate would be 10%.
The good news is that analytics platforms will usually pull conversion rates for you, so there’s no need to calculate it manually. While the conversion rate alone won’t tell you what’s awry in your business, it can gauge your marketing, sales, and customer service efficacy.
You’ll need to calculate this rate over a specific period of time and then compare it to past performances.
Overview of what the average ecommerce conversion rate is
While it’s important to track your ecommerce conversion rates against your company’s past performance, you might also wonder whether these figures are in line with the rest of your industry.
This is heavily dependent on your business model, audience, and a host of other factors. However, the latest research shows that the average ecommerce conversion rate is 3.65%. This means that nearly 4 out of every 100 site visitors are taking a desired action on ecommerce websites.
That might sound low, but conversion rates are actually on an upward trend. For example, the average conversion rate for all websites (not just ecommerce sites) increased by 19.63% from 1.61% to 1.92% in July 2022 compared to July 2021. More consumers are interested in shopping online post-COVID, so it’s no wonder why ecommerce is having something of a renaissance.
However, ecommerce conversion rates still differ by website, device, industry, country, and channel. Let’s take a closer look at those rates now.
Average rates for ecommerce websites
On average, ecommerce websites should expect to see a conversion rate of 1% to 4%.
- Global ecommerce website conversion rate: 2.58%
- US ecommerce website conversion rate: 2.57%
These figures are a bit lower than the overall average of 3.65%. That’s because ecommerce websites vary dramatically in performance based on industry, business model, shoppers, pricing, marketing, and products.
For example, ecommerce fashion websites had an average 1.72% conversion rate in January of 2022, while arts and crafts websites had an average 3.95% conversion rate.
While it’s important to know standard conversion rates for your industry, you shouldn’t consider overall averages to be set in stone, especially if you’re comparing your business to other industries.
Average ecommerce conversion rates by device
Ecommerce happens in an omnichannel environment, where users interact with your brand via multiple devices. As a result, you’ll likely see different ecommerce conversion rates based on which device shoppers use.
As of Q2 2022, these are the average ecommerce conversion rates by device:
Desktops, laptops, and tablets had a higher conversion rate than smartphones, even if more shoppers are browsing on their mobile devices.
Shoppers prefer to do their research while on the go, but when it’s time to actually make a purchase, many shoppers prefer to check out on their computers. Businesses can encourage smartphone conversions by simplifying the mobile checkout experience, but even so, many shoppers still prefer checking out on a laptop or desktop at home.
However, this still depends on your audience and location. For example, in the UK, almost half of all online sales were made through smartphones, and 61% of ecommerce sales in Japan happen on mobile devices.
Average ecommerce conversion rates by industry
Your average ecommerce conversion rate will differ wildly depending on your industry. As of Q4 2022, these are the average conversion rates for the top six ecommerce verticals:
- Fashion and apparel: 2.7%
- Health and beauty: 3.3%
- Entertainment: 2.5%
- Household goods: 2.1%
- Electronics: 1.9%
- Food and beverage: 4.6%
Food and beverage and health and beauty were some of the top-converting verticals in ecommerce in 2022. This might be because these products tend to cost less than, say, household goods or electronics, so the barrier to entry is lower for shoppers.
Average ecommerce conversion rates by region or country
Shoppers in different countries can have very different types of shopping behaviors. For example, users in some markets might prefer to browse products online but check out in store, while others might prefer to do the process entirely online. Price sensitivity, product features, localization, device use, and other factors can also affect ecommerce conversion rates.
In 2022, these were the average ecommerce conversion rates by country:
- US: 2.3%
- Germany: 2.22%
- Denmark: 1.80%
- Netherlands: 1.78%
- Italy: 0.99%
- United Kingdom: 4.1%
Average ecommerce conversion rates by channel
How you acquire a shopper can have a big impact on whether or not they convert. For example, referrals might be more willing to convert and buy something, but leads from paid ad sources might need more convincing before they make a purchase.
As of Q2 2022, these are the average ecommerce conversion rates by channel:
A report by Kibo Commerce found that social media and direct channels had lower conversion rates, but search channels remained the same. Referral traffic has the highest average ecommerce conversion rate. This includes traffic from affiliates or third-party sites that link to your products.
How an ecommerce conversion rate is measured
It’s important to understand average ecommerce conversion rates so you have something to compare yourself against. But there isn’t a set conversion rate since it varies so much by industry.
Some of this information comes from public data that are available from various analytics and personalization software companies. Well-researched studies and sources, such as Statista and Baymard, can help define website conversion rate benchmarks and key performance indicators (KPIs) across industries.
Check out our guide on conversion rates so you can better understand how to calculate these KPIs for your business.
Quick ecommerce conversion rate optimization tips
If your ecommerce website falls short of the industry average, don’t despair. A conversion rate is just a KPI that can help you improve your business. If you see something that needs improvement, you have the power to fix it.
Follow these quick tips to improve your average ecommerce conversion rate:
- Optimize your mobile customer journey. Shoppers often hop from their mobile devices to their desktops to complete purchases because the mobile experience is slow, unresponsive, or lackluster. By improving the mobile commerce experience, you’ll encourage more shoppers to take the plunge immediately, boosting your conversion rates in the process. The best way to do this is to use responsive design for your ecommerce website, which adjusts the user interface to fit different screens.
- Provide a good UX. User experience (UX) on your website should be simple and intuitive. The better your UX, the more likely shoppers are to find what they need and make a purchase. To improve the user experience, you can speed up your website, use clearer images, simplify navigation, and add a site search tool.
- Ensure a smooth checkout process. If shoppers experience any friction during the checkout process, they’re more likely to abandon their shopping cart. You worked hard for that shopper, so don’t give them a reason to leave — overhaul your checkout process to make more sales. Allow guest checkout, reduce the number of form fields, accept Google Pay or PayPal, and remove surprise shipping fees.
- Put your customers first. Don’t make shoppers hunt for the information they need. Put their needs first when it comes to your ecommerce website design. For example, promote your best-converting products and categories so shoppers can skip right to the good stuff.
- Use more social proof. Online shoppers can’t see your products in real life. They need additional assurance that your products are legitimate, and that’s why social proof is so important. List reviews, testimonials, before-and-after photos, and lifestyle images of your products to encourage more shoppers to convert.
- Focus on top-converting traffic channels. If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. If you’re seeing high conversion rates on referral traffic, focus your efforts on generating even more referral traffic. There’s nothing wrong with working on less successful channels, but if you want to boost conversion rates, optimize your top-performing channels first.
- Go deeper with your A/B tests. A/B testing, or split testing, is a must-have for conversion rate optimization (CRO). With A/B testing, you can figure out which components of your ecommerce site are more effective (or less effective) with shoppers.
Discover opportunities to increase your ecommerce conversion rates
It’s important to know whether your business is meeting average conversion rates within your industry so you can make the necessary improvements to rank among top industry performers. Having a starting point with industry standards can help you find areas to improve and optimize your conversion rates.
When you’re ready to get started, discover opportunities to grow your conversion rates and improve engagement using next-generation ecommerce features.
Brands that simplify the customer experience can realize up to a tenfold improvement in conversions — and the seamless integration between Adobe Commerce and other products makes that simple to do.
See Adobe Commerce in action. Take a product tour or watch an overview video now.