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How to increase your ecommerce conversion rate above the average of 2.9%
In this post, we’ll equip you with the latest eCommerce industry benchmarks and give you actionable tips to help you reach your conversion goals. And what’s more, all the data is from our Digital Experience Benchmark Report 2022, which analyzed more than 46 billion user sessions based on 12 months of data from 3870 global websites across 14 different industries.
The average eCommerce conversion rate in 2021
The average conversion rate across sectors within eCommerce in 2021 was 2.96%. Compared to the conversion rate across all industries (2.3%), eCommerce is doing slightly better.
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Average conversion rate by device for all eCommerce industries
The biggest difference can be seen in eCommerce conversion rates by device. Desktop (3%) converts twice as many users, compared to smartphones (1.6%), even though the majority (58%) of all traffic comes from mobile devices.
It seems that users frequently use smartphones for browsing and research, but ultimately make purchases predominantly via desktop.
eCommerce conversion rates in 2021 by sector
Looking at industry averages gives you an idea of how you stack up against your competitors. In eCommerce there are several sub-industries that all have different conversion rate averages.
So let’s take a look at how each industry performs in the eCommerce space…
The data clearly shows the impact of the pandemic: Grocery has a high conversion rate of 6.80%, as many consumers have permanently shifted to buying their groceries online.
Travel and hospitality also show an above-average conversion rate again this year at 3.90%, indicating that people are travelling more again after a long period of lockdowns and restrictions.
The telecom and electronics sectors didn’t fare less well with CVR of 0.5% and 1.40%.
How to optimize your eCommerce conversion rate
Our benchmark data helps you rank your own performance and assess how you compare to your competitors. So, the next step is to optimize your conversion rate because there’s always room for improvement, right?
There are many ways to boost eCommerce conversions and what you do will depend on various factors. But you should always keep a few basic things in mind in order to improve your performance.
1. Optimize your mobile customer journey
Mobile devices continue to rule the online world, with over half of traffic coming from smartphones. Still, the conversion rate from mobile devices is lower than on desktop.
So brands should take a close look at their mobile customer journeys and eliminate any friction.
Your mobile site or app should have intuitive navigation, and a smooth checkout process to ensure users convert on mobile devices. You should avoid pop-ups, carousels and other large visual elements, or adapt them for a smaller mobile screen.
2. Provide a good UX
If you want to win over your website visitors, you need to provide a good overall user experience on your site.
Make sure your navigation is simple and well structured. Call-to-actions are your most important tool to convert users. They should be placed visibly and clearly to indicate where they lead to. If you use forms on your site, less is more – only include the most important fields to avoid overwhelming users.
Also, think about optimizing your site speed. A delay of only one second in mobile loading time can affect the conversion rate by up to 20%.
3. Ensure a smooth check-out process
To improve eCommerce conversion rates, brands need to make the digital checkout process as simple as possible.
Provide users with all the information they need, such as payment and delivery options, at the right time, and offer transparency and easy navigation through each step.
During the checkout process, you should also let customers know that you are there for them and ready to help. For example, if the customer tries to enter an expired promo code, a pop-up window could appear offering a new code with the same or better discount.
4. Prioritize your optimizations
With all the ways to optimize your website for more conversions, your to-do list can get very long, very quickly.
So it’s important to identify which optimizations have the biggest impact on your conversions, which mistakes are costing you the most revenue, and which quick fixes are most worthwhile for you. That way, you can prioritize the adjustments that will really have an effect on your performance.
5. Put your customers first
If you want your website visitors to convert, you need to look at things from their point of view.
Customer-centricity is one of the biggest success factors in eCommerce. Not only should you tailor your offerings and products to your customers’ needs, but also your website and digital experiences.
By analysing your customer journey and tracking your site metrics, Voice of the Customer, and A/B testing, you can find out what excites your users most and what they don’t like at all in order to align optimizations with their wants and needs.
For example, you could offer different payment and delivery options or display customer reviews during checkout to build trust and provide a personalized shopping experience.
eCommerce conversion rate optimization: Consistency is key!
These tips are a good start to increasing your eCommerce conversion rate. However, conversion rate optimization is not a sprint but a marathon – to reach your conversion goals, you need to stay tuned and continuously analyze and optimize your site with regular testing.
Download our 2022 Digital Experience Benchmark Report to get more industry insights into industry conversion patterns, acquisition sources, and browsing behavior!
