Average Ecommerce Conversion Rates
There has been much debate in recent times as to what the average conversion rate is. However there is no real way to define it. Research indicates that average conversion rates differ from sector to sector. For an example, the conversion rates for apparel is 2.2%, travel 2.1%, home and furnishing 2.0%, electronics 3.9% and catalogs 6.1%.
Some of the factors that influence the conversion rate include number of visitors, traffic sources, marketing campaigns, brand awareness, search engine rankings, the purchasing process of the website etc. All these aspects play a role in the calculation of conversion rates. However, for mathematical purposes the conversion rate of a website is calculated by dividing the number of purchases by the total number of unique visitors and multiplying it by 100. Although average ecommerce conversion rate is a good gauge as to how well your website is doing, you must always compare it against the actual sales volume in order to get the correct picture. For an example if for some reason your website experiences a sudden surge of traffic and the number of sales remains the same, your conversion rate will be lower.
Average conversion rates can be used to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. You can measure the proportionate increase in the number of purchases against the increased traffic due to your marketing campaign. If the conversion rate is proportionate to the increase in traffic we can assume that the marketing campaign is a success.