Once we have completed your
website, you may have the inclination to think that all work
is done.
Maybe build another one, or add more pages to net more
visitors? After all, if you're making 10 sales for every 1000
people to visit, then getting 2000 people to visit will mean
20 sales! Right? Many websites concentrate solely on
increasing the number of visitors they have, when often they
have fairly simple problems with their site that, if solved,
would have a huge effect on their conversion rate and improve
their site's bottom line at minimal expense.
How much would it cost you to double your visitor count? For
more sites, plenty. What if you, instead of doubling your
visitor count, worked to double your sales from your existing
customers? How about bumping it to 5%? 10%? Higher?
Think a 5% conversion rate is aiming high? The top online
converter in December 2008 was turning 31.1% of visits to
sales. Amazon was at 23.7% for the same period. Yes, it was
Christmas, but looking at the same report for July 2008 you
can see top sellers with conversion rates of 15% to 25%.
The following conversion rates are a compilation of data from
a number of independent sources. We've also got some figures
for the top online conversion rates taken from April 2005 from
Nielsen//Netratings.
It is extremely difficult to predict accurately what changes
will have a significant positive effect. So many factors work
together, and there are so many differences between users of
one site compared to another, that experience can often work
against you when you're trying to improve a conversion rate.
Below, the latest conversion rates from the Fireclick Index
(made available to its clients). They're aggregated from
Fireclick's actual Web analytics retail customers, spanning
December 1, 2003, to March 1, 2004:
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Sales conversion rates
categorized by type of web retailer.
Vertical Conversion
Rate (%)
Catalog 6.1
Specialty stores 3.9
Fashion/apparel 2.2
Travel 2.1
Home and furnishing 2.0
Sport/outdoors 1.4
Electronics 1.1
All verticals 2.3
Registered users: (Lead Generation)
Companies with an optional and free registration process
commonly get 2% - 3% of visitors to register. When added to
buyers (who also have to register) companies frequently find
they have the personal details of about 5% of visitors.
Free subscribers to paid subscriptions
Typically between 1% and 7% of registered users will convert
to a paid service.
Sales/Visit (browse to buy)
A typical range would be 0.5%-8% depending on the sector,
target market and quality of the site and proposition.
Within retail financial services online, for example, 1 - 2%
would be typical with 2% being very good.
For retailers the high end can go up to 8% but this is
exceptional and only the case for the very best pure-play e-tailers.
For a ´clicks to bricks´ e-commerce site targeting consumers
you would more usually expect between 1% and 2% of visits to
culminate in a sale with 5% representing ´best in class´.
Shop.Org - April 2000
Shop.Org indicates that the average conversion rate of their
members' websites (visits resulting in a sale or sales lead)
currently stands at about 1.8%. (State Of Online Retailing 3.0
- April 2000)
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