What Is The Typical Conversion Rate For Ecommerce Stores? Plus, How To Boost Yours

Are you looking to increase your conversion rate and are wondering what kind of conversion rates other ecommerce stores receive?

In this post, we look at average conversion rates across the entire ecommerce industry. We even provide tips on how to calculate and increase your own.

What is the typical conversion rate for ecommerce?

The average conversion rate for ecommerce stores is between 1.3% and 3.17%, according to multiple sources:

• Littledata – 1.3%
• IRP – 1.77%
• Ruler Analytics – 2.9%
• Dynamic Yield – 3.17%

Littledata’s figure comes from a 2022 survey of 3,306 Shopify stores. The stores surveyed received between 20,000 and 500,000 monthly visits each.

Littledata itself is a Shopify app that produces analytics to track data about a store’s online sales, marketing efforts and customer experience.

The top 10% of stores surveyed had an average conversion rate of 4.8% while the top 20% had an average conversion rate of 3.2%.

The bottom 20% of stores surveyed had conversion rates that were lower than 0.2%.

IRP, or IRP Commerce, tracks data for the entire ecommerce industry as well as 11 individual industries within it.

IRP’s data revealed the average conversion rate across all industries as being 1.77%, as of July 2024. It was 1.99% in July 2023, which means the average ecommerce conversion rate saw a 0.22% decrease year over year.

Ruler Analytics is a tool marketers use to track conversions for campaigns. Their data includes over 100 million data points from 14 different industries.

According to their data from January 2023, the average conversion rate across all 14 industries is 2.9%.

Dynamic Yield is personalization software used by McDonald’s, Lacoste, L’Oréal, Skims and more.

The company tracks data from these companies on a month-to-month basis. Their data is sourced from 200 monthly users of over 400 brands. The data has been collected from over 300 million sessions.

According to Dynamic Yield’s data, the average conversion rate across the eight industries they track was 3.17% in July 2024 and 3.28% in June 2024.

Ecommerce conversion rate benchmarks by industry

IRP, Ruler Analytics and Dynamic Yield all track their data by industry.

Here are average ecommerce conversion rates by industry, according to these three sources:

	IRP	Ruler Analytics	Dynamic Yield	Average
Agency	N/A	2.3%	N/A	2.3%
Arts & Crafts	5.10%	N/A	N/A	5.10%
Auto	1.19%	3.7%	N/A	2.45%
B2B Ecommerce	N/A	1.8%	N/A	1.8%
B2B Services	N/A	2.7%	N/A	2.7%
B2B Tech	N/A	2.3%	N/A	2.3%
B2C Ecommerce	N/A	2.1%	N/A	2.1%
Baby & Child	0.57%	N/A	N/A	0.57%
Beauty & Personal Care	N/A	N/A	4.96%	4.96%
Dental & Cosmetic	N/A	3.1%	N/A	3.1%
Electrical & Commercial Equipment	1.19%	N/A	N/A	1.19%
Fashion	1.45%	N/A	3.47%	2.46%
Finance	N/A	3.1%	N/A	3.1%
Food & Drink	1.05%	N/A	6.33%	3.69%
Health & Wellness	3.41%	3.0%	N/A	3.21%
Home & Furniture	N/A	N/A	1.11%	1.11%
Industrial	N/A	4.0%	N/A	4.0%
Kitchen & Home Appliances	2.62%	N/A	3.93%	3.28%
Legal	N/A	3.4%	N/A	3.4%
Luxury & Jewelry	N/A	N/A	1.3%	1.3%
Multi-Brand Retail	N/A	N/A	4.81%	4.81%
Pets	2.40%	N/A	3.50%	2.95%
Professional Services	N/A	4.6%	N/A	4.6%
Real Estate	N/A	2.4%	N/A	2.4%
Sports & Recreation	1.45%	N/A	N/A	1.45%
Toys, Games & Collectibles	2.31%	N/A	N/A	2.31%
Travel	N/A	2.4%	N/A	2.4%

According to this data, the industry with the highest average conversion rate is the Arts & Crafts industry at 5.1%, though only IRP tracks this industry.

Unfortunately, there’s not a single industry that all three sources track, but of industries that at least two sources track, the Food & Drink industry has the highest average conversion rate at 3.69%.

The industry with the lowest average conversion rate is the Baby & Child industry at 0.57%, but only IRP tracks this industry.

Of industries that at least two sources track, the Auto industry has the lowest average conversion rate at 2.45%.

Ecommerce conversion rate benchmarks by region

Dynamic Yield also tracks average conversion rates by region:

• Europe, the Middle East & Africa (EMEA) – 3.24%
• North America & South America (Americas) – 3.25%
• Asia-Pacific (APAC) – 2.54%

This data was recorded in July 2024.

Ecommerce conversion rates by devices

Finally, Dynamic Yield tracks ecommerce conversions by device type:

• Desktop Computers – 3.98%
• Mobile Devices – 2.85%
• Tablets – 3.53%

This data was recorded in July 2024.

What is conversion rate?

Conversion rate refers to the number of actions that were taken versus the total number of sessions site visitors had where they had the potential to take action.

Ecommerce conversion rate refers to the number of orders that were placed at an online store versus the total number of sessions that store had.

Note: A “session” refers to the period in which a user browses your website. It differs from “user,” which tracks the number of site visitors you had. If the same user visits your site on Monday and then again on Tuesday, your analytics software would track this as two sessions and one user. This makes “session” more accurate to use in a formula for conversion rate because it tracks the number of opportunities in which a user had the potential to convert.

This is the exact formula for ecommerce conversion rate:

( number of orders / number of sessions ) x 100

You take the number of orders you had and divide that number by the number of sessions you had, then multiply that number by 100 to get your conversion rate.

So, if your store had 1,000 sessions and 25 orders during a specific time period, your formula would look like this:

( 25 / 1,000 ) x 100

In this case, your conversion rate would be 2.5% since 25 divided by 1,000 is 0.025. When you multiply 0.025 by 100 to turn it into a percentage, you get 2.5%.

Calculate this quickly for your own store using our conversion rate calculator.

Why is conversion rate important?

Conversion rate is one of the most important metrics ecommerce websites can track.

It’s important to track multiple metrics, also known as key performance indicators (KPI), throughout the checkout process so you can monitor your store’s progress.

Other important metrics include cart abandonment rate and average order value.

Your site’s conversion rate lets you know exactly what percentage of your store’s sessions are generating orders.

Once you start tracking this metric as well as other metrics, including traffic, traffic source, bounce rate, time on site and customer acquisition cost (CAC), you can get to work on optimizing it to increase the number of orders you receive from the same number of sessions.

How to calculate and keep track of your store’s conversion rate

There are multiple conversion rates you can track for ecommerce.

The most common conversion rate is the one we already covered, which uses the number of orders and sessions you’ve received to reveal your store’s overall conversion rate.

First, go through your ecommerce platform’s analytics. They might have your conversion rate readily available.

For example, since Shopify hosts your store for you, they’re able to track the number of sessions and orders your store receives. This allows you to track multiple KPIs from the platform’s analytics dashboard, including conversion rate.

To calculate this metric on your own, you need to choose a time period to track, such as the last seven days, the last 30 days, a specific month, the last 12 months, year to date or a specific year.

Then, you need to determine the number of orders you received during the same time period. Your ecommerce platform should have this information.

Then, refer to Google Analytics or whatever analytics tool you use to determine the number of sessions you received during this time period.

You can then input your numbers into the conversion rate formula from before to come up with your conversion rate for this time period.

It’s a good idea to calculate your conversion rate in internals so you can track your progress over time. Every 30 days, quarterly and annually are good intervals to use.

You can set up conversion rate tracking in Google Analytics if your ecommerce platform doesn’t track conversions for you.

You can also calculate conversion rates from ad and marketing campaigns, but these are much more complicated formulas.

How to increase your store’s conversion rate

The average conversion rate for ecommerce ranges from 1.3% to 3.17%, as we said before. This means a good ecommerce conversion rate falls within or exceeds this range.

Ecommerce conversion rate optimization (CRO) is its own topic, but we can cover a few tips here.

The best thing you can do is keep track of multiple KPIs for your store so you can see where you fall short.

Use tools like Hotjar to see how users are browsing individual pages, especially your homepage, individual product pages and your checkout page.

Other tips include optimizing your site for speed and user experience (UX), using high-quality product images, offering better products, allowing customers to checkout as guests, and offering multiple payment options.