Average ecommerce conversion rate: 2.27% (Updated January 2021)

Note: The average conversion rate above is based on 12 studies, most of which were published over the last 4 years. By and large, we have excluded data that is anomalous and/or redundant due to age (usually older than 10 years). This list (and the average) is updated as new data is published.

Ecommerce Conversion Rate Benchmarks

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Grow Your Conversion Rate Even Higher and Strengthen Your Competitive Advantage with this In-depth 115-point Optimization Checklist:
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    These days you can get access to data with only a couple clicks or taps, but the thing is – you are not always given reliable information. And as an ecommerce retailer, whether a rookie or a seasoned businessman, you know it very well how important it is to get accurate data. Not only to be able to find out how your website conversion rate stacks up, but also to help you make decisions or adjustments to your own business. And how can you find yourself in all this data that’s overflowing you?

    Worry not – that’s what we’re here for.

    In this post, we’ve compiled the best recent case studies, roundups and benchmarks to give you a definitive ecommerce conversion rate average. The data covers rates across a number of industries from the early 2010s to the present day.

    What’s more, we’ve also found the most important studies of conversion rates regarding specific segments, like devices, countries and referral channels.

    Growth hack your ecommerce conversion rate, sales and profits with this 115-Point Ecommerce Optimization Checklist

    Quick list of all the points we cover in this article about average ecommerce conversion rate:

    1. Benchmarks List
    2. Is Conversion Rate Important?
    3. How Is Website Conversion Rate Calculated?
    4. What’s a Good Conversion Rate?
    5. Ecommerce Conversion Rate by Industry
    6. Ecommerce Conversion Rate by Country
    7. Ecommerce Conversion Rate by Acquisition Channel
    8. Ecommerce Conversion Rate by Device
    9. Ecommerce Conversion Rate by Platform
    10. Ecommerce Conversion Rate by Payment

    List of Ecommerce Conversion Rate Tools Benchmarks

    1. 2.42% IRP Commerce (Dec 2020)
    2. 1.84% Wolfgang Digital (2020)
    3. 3.2% Unbounce (2020)
    4. 2.42% OrderMetrics (2019)
    5. 1.91% Monetate (Q1 2020)
    6. 4.31% Invesp (2020)
    7. 1.85% Wolfgang Digital (2019)
    8. 2.53% Adobe Digital Insights (2018)
    9. 1.56% Wolfgang Digital (2017)
    10. 1.93% Adobe Digital Insights (2017)
    11. 1.91% AddShoppers (2016)
    12. 1.36% Wolfgang Digital (2016)

    Missed Something? Help Us Out

    Have we missed some important data? If you know of research that isn’t included, please get in touch at [email protected].

    Other Notable Studies Not Included in the Final Calculation of Average Ecommerce Conversion Rate

    13. 2.35% Wordstream (2014) – Study of conversion rates of landing pages by Wordstream.
    14. 8% Mixpanel (2017) – Excluded as anomalous.
    15. 1.37% Top10 Website Hosting (Q2 2019)

    Is Ecommerce Conversion Rate an Important Metric?

    There’s an ongoing argument about the importance of conversion rates. We’ve even published a post about why conversion rate shouldn’t be the primary metric you seek to improve through your optimization campaigns. Conversion rates vary so much across verticals that comparing one store or market to another often won’t produce any meaningful insights. An apparel website, for instance, will most likely have drastically different metrics to a B2B-focused supplier of industrial materials.

    That said, conversion rates aren’t going away. And there’s a simple reason. When used in conjunction with other important metrics, they can be an excellent barometer of the “health” and competitiveness of an online store. Just be careful about how you use third-party benchmarks. Always formulate your own KPIs based on data from your competitors (wherever possible), specific markets and in-house analytics (btw find out our post about must-have ecommerce Google Analytics reports).

    A Note About Our Top Sources

    At Growcode, we regularly consult a number of excellent sources, which draw either on their own subscriber data or third-party data. If you’re eager to ensure your own benchmarks are up-to-date, they’re worth keeping track of.

    • IRP Commerce – IRP Commerce publishes real-time ecommerce data about a number of industries and segments on the “ecommerce market data” section of their site. Most key ecommerce metrics, including conversion rates, are included.
    • Wolfgang Digital – Wolfgang Digital is a digital marketing company that has published several interesting studies in the past, including a major 2017 benchmark report that has been widely cited across the web.
    • Statista – In terms of broad, easy-to-consume data, Statista is still the leader. The site is responsible for wide-ranging materials about international ecommerce and constitutes an excellent source for retailers that want to keep their finger on the pulse of the global market.
    • Unbounce – The resources and reinserts on this site can help answer the most common questions. They have a full section dedicated to e-commerce including this research on conversion rate.

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      How is Ecommerce Website Conversion Rate Calculated?

      The calculation for measuring the overall conversion rate of an Ecommerce store is widely accepted and well-understood.

      Conversion rate = Sessions with transactions / Total sessions.

      Note the use of “sessions” rather than unique visitors. A session refers to a visit by an individual within a given time period, often 30 minutes. If a customer visits twice during the same period, it will count as one session. If, as in the example above, a customer visits again, after a thirty minute period has elapsed, the second visit will be recorded as a separate session.

      A “session” is a superior indicator of buyer intent, as opposed to a unique visitor, because it comprises a self-contained shopping “event”. The same customer may visit a store multiple times during a certain period, with each visit representing an opportunity to make a sale for the online retailer.
      Visitor behaviorThe graph above outlines the main ways sessions can be understood in terms of visitor behavior. (Source)

      What Is a Good Conversion Rate?

      There are significant conversion rate disparities between industries, countries, seasons, devices and more. For December 2020, for example, the typical conversion rate for the arts and crafts market was 2.44%. Compare that to 0.99% for baby & child market.

      With that in mind, it’s best to develop your own key performance indicators (KPIs) by looking at the average ecommerce conversion rate in your industry, taking into account your own data as much as possible, while allowing for anomalies.

      What’s more, you should always be careful when making comparisons to competitors. Amazon, for instance, boasts a 13% conversion rate, which is almost seven times the industry average. Also, understand that there can be reasonable differences between stores in the same industry – a clothes retailer targeting younger people will likely have a sizeable difference in its overall website conversion rate when compared to a store catering to an older market.

      Third party metrics, medians, averages etc. are great for giving you a general idea of what to aim for. They also highlight the places you might be running into issues (such as on mobile devices), and help to measure yourself against close competitors.

      So what’s a good website conversion rate? Assuming you’re not hitting well below your market average, and accounting for natural and manmade disasters, it’s simply one that’s better than the last one! Sorry we couldn’t be more specific folks!

      Ecommerce Conversion Rate by Industry

      When developing goals and in-house benchmarks, we’ve found market-specific conversion rate standards to be a valuable source of data for gauging the general performance of an Ecommerce store.

      IRP Commerce provides timely data about a number of markets. You can see from the graph below that “Arts & Crafts” leads the way with 3.79% while “Baby & Child” lags behind with 0.99%.

      Ecommerce-Conversion Rate by Industry

      This graph, based on data from IRP Commerce, shows recent conversion rates across a range of markets. Average conversion by industry: Sports and Recreation: 1.75%; Arts and Crafts: 3.79%; Baby & Child: 0.99%; Cars & Motorcycling: 1.55%; Electrical & Commercial Equipment: 2.23%; Fashion Clothing & Accessories: 2.44%; Food & Drink: 2.37%; Health & Wellbeing: 3.62%; Home Accessories & Giftware: 2.16%; Kitchen & Home Appliances: 2.48%; Pet Care: 3.28%; (Source)
      Recent median data also presents interesting data giving us some additional peek into how conversion rate is distributed in every Industry.

      Ecommerce-Conversion-Rate-by-Product-Type

      Top 25% benchmarks are great for seeing how the top-performers are doing and if they managed to build a substantial ahead of the pack. Median conversion rate by product type: Food & Drink: 3.58%; Health & Beauty: 3.08%; Toys & Games: 2.43%; Jewelry & Accessories: 2.14%; Home & Garden: 1.81%; Clothing & Fashion: 1.96%; Sports & Recreation: 1.85%; Electronics: 1.27%; Furniture: 0.68% 

      Ecommerce Conversion Rate by Country

      It’s important to take benchmark conversion rates of individual countries into account when formulating your own KPIs. The conversion rate you should expect from an Indian market, for example, will be different from that of a US market.

      It's important to take benchmark conversion rates of individual countries into account when formulating your own KPIs. #ecommerce #CRO Click To Tweet

      Ecommerce-Conversion-Rate-by-Country

      Germany leads with an average conversion rate of 2.22% while Italy lags behind at 0.99%. Typical ecommerce conversion rate in countries: Germany: 2.22%; United States: 1.96%; United Kingdom: 1.88%; Denmark: 1.80%; Netherlands: 1.78%; Greece: 1.44%; France: 1.10%; India: 1.10%; Italy: 0.99% (Source)

      It can be particularly useful to come up with language- and country-specific KPIs for segments of your customer base. It might also be necessary to amend KPIs based on industry benchmarks if you’re catering to a market with a lower overall conversion rate. As always, the key here is for these stats to inform your goals not to define them.

      Ecommerce Conversion Rate by Channel/Source

      Ecommerce conversion rates by traffic source are incredibly useful to retailers because the figures can be used to set channel-specific goals while also honing in on the most promising and best-performing sources of traffic.

      Referral traffic is by far the best performer and highlights the need among ecommerce retailers to encourage.

      Referral traffic is driven from external sites that link to your store. This can be an expert post recommending one of your products or a comment on a blogpost. If the traffic source is highly relevant, people often come with a strong purchase intent. This is why the average Referral Conversion Rate performs so well. – Florian Schulze

      Ecommerce-Conversion-Rate-by-Traffic-Source

      Referral and email are the best-performing acquisition channels. Median conversion rate by traffic sources: Direct: 2.16%; Email: 5.32%; Organic: 2.08%; Facebook: 0.93%; AdWords: 1.42%; Referral: 5.44%; Social: 0.74% 
      As is clear from the visualization below, the performance of these channels remains fairly consistent in terms of best and worst, irrespective of industry. Though in some industries, particular acquisition channels can be extremely powerful (like “Email” in “Food & Drink”)

      Facebook is an often favored channel in modern ecommerce. However, it performs best for very visual products such as those in the Fashion, Electronics, Food & Drink and Beauty & Wellness niches. – Florian Schulze

      Ecommerce-Conversion-Rate-by-Product-Type-and-Traffic-Source

      Generally speaking, the top-performing channels are consistent across industries.

      Average Ecommerce Conversion Rate by Device

      Benchmarks for specific devices – namely desktop, tablet and smartphone – are also worth considering when forming specific KPIs. As is clear from the data below, conversion rates for large-screen devices like tablets and computers are significantly higher (more than double) than the conversion rate for mobile.

      This information can help you form an accurate picture of how you’re performing on different devices. A low desktop conversion when compared to mobile, for example, might indicate issues with your desktop site design. An extremely low mobile conversion rate, on the other hand, likely points to a poorly-designed mobile shopping experience and checkout. Find out how to boost mobile conversion rate by stealing ideas form Asos.com!

      Ecommerce-Conversion-Rate-Device-Quarter

      Traditional (desktop) and tablets are winners. Average conversion rate by device for the 1st quarter of 2020: desktop: 1.98%; tablet: 2.92% mobile (smartphone): 1.81%; other: 0.38% (Source)

      Ecommerce Conversion Rate by Platform

      Looking at conversion rates by platform enables you to gauge performance across the whole spectrum of operating systems. Not only does this allow you to pinpoint UX and compatibility issues that may be platform-specific, but it also gives you the opportunity to optimize for the platform most widely used by your customers.

      Windows is the top performer when it comes to conversion rates by platform. Notably, Linux only has a conversion rate of 0.02%. As expected, conversion rates for mobile operating systems are lower than desktop ones.

      Ecommerce-Conversion-Rate-Platform-Quarter
      Windows is coming first with Macintosh slightly behind it. Average conversion rate by platform for the 1st quarter of 2020: Android: 1.8%; Chrome OS: 2.9%; Linux: 0.02%; Macintosh: 3.78%; Windows: 4.94%; Windows Phone: 0.5%; iOS: 1.88% (Source)

      Ecommerce Conversion Rate by Payment

      Payment is the final step in the customer journey that stands between the client and the product he’s ordering. In a nutshell, payment makes or breaks the deal. Making sure everything is working perfectly at that moment pays a huge role in your conversion rate result. What’s interesting, PayPal transactions have 70% higher checkout rates than non-Paypal transactions. So, if your online store doesn’t support PayPal transactions, better get to it ASAP.
      PayPal checkout rates
      Customers using PayPal seem to be converting more than others. (Source: PayPal)

      Conclusion on Ecommerce Conversion Rate Benchmarks

      Navigating the world of online data is difficult and complex. Dozens, if not hundreds, of new ecommerce studies – covering a range of metrics – are published every year. Which should you give your attention to and which should you ignore?

      At Growcode, we believe it’s best to take a focused approach. We advise our clients to rely on a handful of well-researched studies, picked because they cover a range of metrics deemed to be relevant to their own KPIs.

      It’s important to remember that the role of benchmarks is to help you better understand your own performance and goals and shape your optimization strategy. They’re not gold standards to be replicated. What’s more, it’s always best to take as nuanced an approach as possible, accounting for both general metrics, such as average by country, along with specific metrics, such as conversion rate by industry.

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      Growcode Ecommerce Blog / Ecommerce / 12 Ecommerce Conversion Rate Statistics (Updated January 2021)